HID’s trusted tags ready for Medicaid programs, Mexican state taps ImageWare
03 July, 2014
category: Biometrics, Digital ID, Government, Health
HID tags meet Medicaid visitation requirements
HID Global announced that its Trusted Tag Services meets the Electronic Visit Verification requirements for home health agencies enacted by several states as a condition of Medicaid participation. HID’s trusted tags provide “proof of presence” of the caregiver in the patient’s home, eliminating the opportunity to falsify records to support fraudulent claims.
Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for home-based care in excess of $31 billion and a booming home health industry that is expected to reach a value of $150.8 billion by 2018 have given rise to a multi-billion dollar fraud problem for public and private insurers. One of the most common fraudulent activities is submission of claims for payment on services that were never provided, a situation exacerbated by manual verification processes that make it easy to falsify records pertaining to the presence of a caregiver at a patient’s home.
To eliminate fraudulent claims, a several state Medicaid programs now require home health agencies to implement Electronic Visit Verification systems to prove that a caregiver was physically present in the patient’s home for the required length of time. While some states mandate the use of specific equipment, others simply require systems that meet minimum technical and functional standards.
Tamper-proof tags are attached to or embedded into an object inside the patient’s home in such a way that they cannot surreptitiously be removed or altered. When the caregiver arrives, they tap the object with their NFC-enabled device to communicate secure information to HID Global’s cloud-based authentication platform. The data read from a trusted tag has security and privacy attributes that change on every tap, providing an indisputable and auditable Electronic Visit Verification record for home health agencies to use for billing and reimbursement.
GlobalPlatform releases Internet of Things white paper
GlobalPlatform has published a free to download white paper, examining how GlobalPlatform Specifications can address the key privacy and security concerns for the deployment of Internet of things or machine-to-machine devices.
The white paper, entitled: “Leveraging GlobalPlatform to Improve Security and Privacy in the Internet of Things” is aimed to to professionals in industries such as health care, automotive, wearable devices and energy, that are interested in the use of embedded technologies for new forms of secure communication and data transmission. The document offers use cases for these markets, introducing the function of IoT devices and explains how vulnerabilities in security and privacy can be resolved.
The paper introduces GlobalPlatform’s prospective role in the IoT standardization landscape as a provider of open standard technical specifications that improve the interoperability and security of these connected devices. This begins with the secure element or trusted execution environment and extends to include the trusted service manager, controlling authority and other roles of a multi-stakeholder ecosystem.
Biometric Signature ID integrated with Epic electronic medical records
Biometric Signature ID released an authentication solution for use with Epic’s electronic medical record software.
Users of Epic will now have access to the BioSig-ID suite of products including the web-based app. The integration of identity authentication into electronic medical records will enable health care organizations to secure multi-factor authentication access to medical records and gate access to system and user administration.
BioSig-ID software using gesture biometrics will enable client’s employees and customers to use their mouse or touchscreen to draw a password before accessing online records. Only after successfully verifying their identity will the user gain access to the records.
BioSig-ID has the biometric reader resides in the cloud. Users do not require special hardware or software downloads. This virtual reader accessed via the Internet makes identity verification available. Identification is accomplished by having users handwrite four letters or numbers within a confined space on a webpage by moving their mouse, stylus or dragging their finger across their smartphone screen. The software assesses the unique pattern of length, angle, speed, height, number of strokes and stores the information in an encrypted database. This data is compared to patterns collected by the user’s subsequent logins, confirming that the person who registered is the same person trying to access the account. Access is from any mobile device or PC.
Mexican state taps ImageWare for biometric driver licenses
ImageWare Systems Inc. was selected to implement a multi-modal biometric driver license system for the State of Baja California, Mexico.
The contract was awarded to Funciones Ocupacionales Insha, S.A. de C.V. For ImageWare, the contract is valued at more than $1.0 million and its software will help generate more than one million licenses over the next three years. ImageWare will receive one-time license fees for its software upon delivery and ongoing payments for its professional services and maintenance as delivered.
ImageWare will help to deploy the system at governmental offices in the largest cities in the state, including Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate and Rosarito, as well as implement mobile stations through the state. The project will begin in the third quarter of 2014.
The multi-modal biometric driver license system will be based on ImageWare’s CloudID modular software platform that supports the development and deployment of secure, yet flexible identity management solutions for the creation of credentials, including IDs, passports, driver’s licenses, smart cards and access control credentials.
The company’s IWS QuickApps will provide the user interfaces to register applicants, validate identities and print and encode cards. The user will manage security for the system by ImageWare’s Desktop Security System, with the use of multi-factor authentication, data encryption and a secured log of all actions.