Several factors are driving the transition from paper-based health records to electronic health record systems. In the United States, the adoption rate of electronic health record systems significantly increased after "Meaningful Use" incentive program was started in 2009. While increased use of electronic health record systems could improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare services, it can also lead to a number of security and privacy issues, such as identity theft and healthcare fraud. Such incidents could have negative impact on trustworthiness of electronic health record technology itself and thereby could limit its benefits. In this dissertation, we tackle three challenges that we believe are important to improve the security and privacy in electronic health record systems. Our approach is based on an analysis of real-world incidents, namely theft and misuse of patient identity, unauthorized usage and update of electronic health records, and threats from insiders in healthcare organizations. Our contributions include design and development of a user-centric monitoring agent system that works on behalf of a patient (i.e., an end user) and securely monitors usage of the patient's identity credentials as well as access to her electronic health records. Such a monitoring agent can enhance patient's awareness and control and improve accountability for health records even in a distributed, multi-domain environment, which is typical in an e-healthcare setting. This will reduce the risk and loss caused by misuse of stolen data. In addition to the solution from a patient's perspective, we also propose a secure system architecture that can be used in healthcare organizations to enable robust auditing and management over client devices. This helps us further enhance patients' confidence in secure use of their health data.

This project aimed to enhance communication and collaboration among care providers in Stockholm Region and Stockholm Municipality by analyzing health data in various medical record systems and identifying the data that needs to be shared to support elderly individuals with multi-morbidity. Interviews with health experts, caregivers, and policymakers, as well as a literature review, were conducted to gather data. The findings indicated that caring for multi-morbid elderly individuals poses many challenges, including managing multiple chronic conditions, the risk of adverse drug interactions, physical and emotional burden, reduced functional ability, social isolation, and economic consequences. A holistic approach to care is needed, including coordinating care across multiple specialities, addressing social and psychological factors, and providing support for caregivers. Additionally, health data sharing could help with the challenges of ageing and multi-morbidity, but barriers to accessing relevant health data exist. The barriers include a lack of measurement values, different systems used in different healthcare facilities, outdated systems and a large amount of health data existing as free-text notes which make it difficult to extract useful information. Therefore, new HIE solutions are needed to improve patient safety and better integrate existing systems. Future work should focus on improving the accessibility and usability of health data, addressing security and privacy issues, and promoting standardization and interoperability. / Målet med detta projekt var att förbättra kommunikationen och samarbetet mellan vårdgivare i Stockholmsregionen och Stockholm kommun genom att analysera hälsodata i olika medicinska journalsystem och identifiera de data som behöver delas för att stödja multi-sjuka äldre. Intervjuer med hälsoexperter, vårdgivare och beslutsfattare samt en litteraturstudie genomfördes för att samla in data. Resultaten visade att vården för äldre personer med flera sjukdomar innebär många utmaningar, inklusive hantering av flera kroniska tillstånd, risken för biverkningar från läkemedel, fysisk och emotionell belastning, minskad funktionell förmåga, social isolering och ekonomiska konsekvenser. En helhetssyn på vården krävs, inklusive samordning av vården över olika specialiteter, beaktande av sociala och psykologiska faktorer och stöd till vårdgivare. Dessutom kan delning av hälsodata hjälpa till med utmaningarna med åldrande och flera sjukdomar, men det finns hinder för att få tillgång till relevant hälsodata. Hindren inkluderar brist på mätvärden, olika system som används i olika vårdinrättningar, föråldrade system och en stor mängd hälsodata som finns som anteckningar, vilket gör det svårt att extrahera användbar information. Därav, behövs nya lösningar för hälsodata-utbyte för att förbättra patientens säkerhet och bättre integrera befintliga system. Framtida arbete bör fokusera på att förbättra tillgängligheten och användbarheten hos hälsodata, hantera säkerhets- och integritetsfrågor och främja standardisering och interoperabilitet.