Deploying GlobalPlatform Specifications within smart card based healthcare programs can:

• Provide a secure electronic information exchange and cost-effective infrastructure to support healthcare applications
• Protect the issuer's investment by 'future-proofing' the program against business decisions which have not been made at the time of deployment. GlobalPlatform's flexible and scalable infrastructure can accommodate significant changes to the program post-issuance
• Provide healthcare providers with secure and immediate access to patient medical records, billing information and patient care history.

Healthcare Implementations:

Austrian Citizen Cards
In the first quarter of 2005, Bell ID's ANDiS Management System facilitated the issuance and management of eleven million social insurance citizen smart cards in Austria. Based on GlobalPlatform systems technology, the new 'e-card' system eliminated the need to issue and process 40 million paper-based healthcare vouchers annually. In addition to the e-cards, ANDiS also issued and managed more than 25,000 o-cards which were for authorized staff in doctors' practices.

Bell ID's web-based ANDiS Management System managed the complete life-cycle of all e-cards and o-cards with the integrated GlobalPlatform based Post-Issuance Personalization (PIP) functionality. This added feature not only allows cardholders to download and reload applications at a later date, but also enables the Main Association of Austrian Social Insurance Institutions to change on-card data via their own e-portal, the Karten Service Portal. In addition, the PIP feature assists the Karten Service Portal in allowing citizens to apply for and download digital certificates.

Used as citizen cards, the new multi-application e-cards managed by the ANDiS solution, contain personal cardholder data as well as up to four digital certificates for data security and verification of the cardholder's identity.

GlobalPlatform member solution providers include Bell ID.

Slovenian Health Insurance Card
In May 2008, the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia launched a new project called ‘e-health 2010’ to improve its existing nationwide health card system – The Slovenian Health Insurance Card (HIC).

‘e-health 2010’ has the ambitious objective of inter-connecting health and social information systems on a national level, ensuring e-services are available to all relevant parties in a secure and efficient manner. The project will develop a new version of the HIC to enable the use of digital certificates to accommodate electronic signing, establish the infrastructure required for online information access, and develop the prototype for electronic prescriptions.

Key to the success of the new system is its ability to be fully backward-compatible with the existing infrastructure and the two million cards already in circulation, without disrupting services.

The solution uses GlobalPlatform Card Specification v2.1.1.

Pilots for the new cards began in the summer of 2008, with the first identity card that incorporates HIC functionalities to be issued before the end of 2008. By 2010, the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia aims to have replaced all existing HIC smart cards in circulation with the new generation of e-healthcards.

GlobalPlatform member solution providers involved in this initiative include Gemalto.

Taiwan National Health Insurance Card
The Bureau of National Health Insurance of Taiwan (BNHI) began rolling out 22 million Integrated Circuit (IC) health cards to Taiwan citizens in July 2001, replacing its original paper-based system, which was associated with high fraud rates and high administration costs. The smart card solution offered significant time and cost savings for the BNHI as well as greater transparency.

The smart cards used in the project utilized GlobalPlatform technology, specifically the GlobalPlatform Card Specification v2.0. It was the first and largest healthcare smart card project in the world.

The cards are able to store up to 32K of information related to health insurance programs, data concerning past medical services, details of the patient's public health administration and recent medical expenses.

GlobalPlatform member solution providers include Datacard Group, Giesecke & Devrient, Hitachi, Infineon Technologies and Sun Microsystems.