TicSalut presents a solution to authenticate identities on the access to the Personal Health Channel at the MWC

Thanks to Mobile Connect, Catalan citizens will be able to access their medical data in full security by using their mobile phone as a means of communication to access the Personal Health Channel. This will also enable them to interact with the health professionals, the Director of Fundació TicSalut, Dr. Francesc Garcia Cuyàs, announced during the Mobile World Congress. This real test bed has five million potential users.

“Mobility is one of the key elements that will take us into the future of health, as it strengthens the citizens’ active role in managing their own health”, Dr. Garcia Cuyàs declared. Thanks to this initiative in the area of mobile health, in addition to giving citizens access to their own medical records, a suitable environment will be created for starting up new services and applications for them. 

More specifically, Mobile Connect is a solution based on the SIM card that works with any telephone with basic mobile cover. The system will be entirely integrated in the mobile phone, so the user’s data will not end up in the hands of the operators or be accidentally shared. This makes it particularly useful for certain sectors such as health, banking or administration, which need to work with strong and reliable data protection and security systems.

Furthermore, the Mobile Connect service will use the OpenID protocol, which allows interoperability between mobile operators and service providers, in addition to guaranteeing a trouble-free user experience.

 “Secure access to personal health records is our priority. We are pleased that initiatives like Mobile Connect smooth the path by offering us a simple and interoperable solution”, says Joan Cornet, director of the Competence Centre in mHealth of the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation. Anne Bouveron, directress general of GSMA, added that, “Mobile operators can provide the authentication abilities that are necessary to enable citizens, companies and the administration to interact and be able to access services in a privileged and secure environment of confidence”. 

The project arises within the framework of the GSMA Mobile Connect Initiative, in order to create new solutions with consistency and interoperability to manage digital identities, and has the support of the principal mobile operators and other players of the ICT ecosystem, such as Dailymotion, Deezer, Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Morpho, Oberthur and VALID.

Fundació TicSalut’s active presence at the Mobile World Congress

In addition to presenting the Mobile Connect pilot project, Fundació TicSalut played an active role in the events on mHealth programmed during the Mobile World Congress 2014. 

During the Health & Wellness meetings organised by ECHAlliance, Tino Martí, officer at TicSalut International Area, offered a keynote on connected health and mobile health policies in Catalonia, as well as making an introduction to the eHealth strategy around the Personal Health Folder. What’s more, the results of the Telèmac project of the Catalan Health Institute were presented. 

At the GSMA Seminar “Implementing mHealth”, Dr. Jordi Martínez, Fundació TicSalut Director of Innovation, talked about the most important challenges facing the Personal Health Folder, which are to achieve system interoperability and to facilitate access for both adult and minor end users. Additionally, the Health Department presented the first mobile application to facilitate the vaccine calendar complement, which receives support from Sanofi Pasteur MSD. 

Further information

Leading mobile operators unveil GSMA Mobile Connect Initiative to provide consistent and interoperable approach to managing digital identity. GSMA, 24 February 2014 [access: 10 March 2014]. Available at: http://www.gsma.com/…