Where is the security information model?

Specifications RM
1

The landing page of specifications does not contain the word security.

The EHR information model specifications refer to ACCESS_CONTROL_SETTINGS claiming it is in the Security Information model :

…by an instance of a subclass of the abstract class ACCESS_CONTROL_SETTINGS , defined in the Security Information Model

and architecture overview refers to it in 5.5.1.5 :

The Security Information Model defines the semantics of access control and privacy setting for information in the EHR.

A google search for openEhr “security information model” brings no direct results, but brings an issue I created in 2019 which shows I was looking for this before (and I have absolutely no memory of that…)

So let me ask before I forget why I opened this topic: where is the security information model?

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ACCESS_CONTROL_SETTINGS is a placeholder class which should be specialised according to specific security models. A long time ago, we assumed that something produced by either ISO 13606 or ISO PMAC would be the origin of such a model. The latter might still be.

Anyway, things have changed a bit since the original modelling, and we now have GDPR, and a better idea of what ‘consent’ might mean, including computationally. So anything that looked like an RBAC model of access is probably today something designated by a patient consent, rather than an institutional system.

There are 2 models of consent in IHE, here’s the advanced one (APPC).

There is still no clear model of content-based EHR access that I know of. The key is that whatever it is has to be patient- and clinician- comprehensible i.e. someone could be an app with an intuitive UI to represent the gatekeeping possibilities.

Obviously a lot of other things have changed since the original modelling, including cloud-based computing, a theory of distributed computing based on moving algorithms around not data etc etc.

We need a newer analysis. For me, the starting point would be the re-purposing of the ACCESS_CONTROL_SETTINGS as a managed computable consent object for each EHR. There’s a lot more to do of course.

3

Thanks. That’s helpful, but unless I’m missing something here, there is no security information model but it is mentioned across the specs. Shouldn’t we remove references to it in this case?

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