Trust-by-Design: Evaluating Issues and Perceptions within Clinical Passporting
This addresses the administrative burden on healthcare professionals, potentially freeing up time for patient care, but it is incremental as it builds on existing identity management concepts.
The paper investigates whether digital technologies, specifically Self-Sovereign Identity, can reimagine administrative processes like identity verification and pre-employment screening for healthcare professionals, resulting in the development of user-led requirements and design principles that confirm the need and potential for professionalizing identity management.
A substantial administrative burden is placed on healthcare professionals as they manage and progress through their careers. Identity verification, pre-employment screening and appraisals: the bureaucracy associated with each of these processes takes precious time out of a healthcare professional's day. Time that could have been spent focused on patient care. In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever to optimize these professionals' time. This paper presents the synthesis of a design workshop held at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) and subsequent interviews with healthcare professionals. The main research question posed is whether these processes can be re-imagined using digital technologies, specifically Self-Sovereign Identity? A key contribution in the paper is the development of a set of user-led requirements and design principles for identity systems used within healthcare. These are then contrasted with the design principles found in the literature. The results of this study confirm the need and potential of professionalising identity and credential management throughout a healthcare professional's career.