Security

Productivity Servers support a set of security policies created exclusively for integrated healthcare information management. These preserve existing industry best practice by closely associating system level permissions with staff roles and rights.

Role Based Access Control

Using this an approach, Mericle independently manages the logged-on user’s scope of use with regard to other staff members activities. For example, a secretary can be given functional access to certain data entry areas but have their scope limited to a nominated consultant’s episodes.
Once a user has logged on, Access Control Manager operates transparently and in the background by issuing formal approvals / denials in response to access requests as the user transits through functions on Productivity Server. The access requests and responses are written to a session log which gives a detailed audit trail of activity by both function and patient.

Compound Privileges

In response to a security request, Access Control Manager looks at the system level privileges and the hospital level roles of both the data entry user and the healthcare service provision staff. In particular it will take into account:

• the current user’s access profile by function
• the current workstation’s access profile by function
• the current user’s scope of use by episode specialist in charge (clinical records)
• the current user’s scope of use by activity level (read only /read-write)

Easy Administration

Mericle’s ‘Office Manager’ administration tool lets system managers shape a user’s access profile in as much or as little detail as appropriate. A hierarchy of security levels is not used. Instead there are over 200 configurable privileges covering every function in the application. For quick and easy setup, users can be assigned to groups and then have their access profile customised only in the areas where they deviate from the group profile. Even workstations can be assigned an access profile, letting administrators make certain functions available only at nominated locations on the network.