Personal Path/Entrust Pact Eyes HIPAA Regs

In recognition of the technology requirements the pending HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Account ability Act) regulations will impose on the industry, PersonalPath Systems, Inc. (Upper Saddle River, NJ), has utilized patented technology from Plano, TX-based Entrust Technologies, a PKI and digital certificate provider, to build a privacy solution that will enable development of HIPAA-compliant portal offerings for health insurance plans.

PersonalPath, a provider of large health plan technologies, "was looking for support for a privacy-capable online system that allows for the separation of data from the individual's identity," explains Arthur Coleman, vice president, industries, Entrust Technologies.

PersonalPath chose to partner with Entrust, in part, because of the vendor's True-Pass product, according to Tom Hagan, CIO and privacy officer, PersonalPath.

Adds Entrust's Coleman, "TruePass allows users to roam with the same certificate. That is because it is server based and delivered through a tiny Java applet that is downloaded to the device," he says. "That device holds an identifier, which is a piece of the puzzle. Then it generates a digital identifier which is sent back to the server for identification of an individual."