The challenge is to identify internationally compatible and interoperable solutions on three levels:

• Person identification / patient identification
• health professional identification incl. identification of persons (health professionals) working in organisations with more than one employee
• Rights management: definition of rights, rules and procedures for health professionals

The two opposite starting points:

1. keeping the interference with already installed systems in MSs as low as possible,
   and on the other hand
2. taking into consideration that most of the steps of the designed processes have to be included in national infrastructures emphasise the complexity of multilateral identity management.

Additionally, the design of the necessary identification and authentication processes of patients and health professionals supports the participating MSs in creating, or easily adapting, processes within their own infrastructures that are fully compliant with the epSOS LSP goals. This is achieved by presenting alternatives and options for these processes, which are all comparable and equally valid. Many of the necessary steps or parts of the identification and authentication processes are based on commonly used technologies.

Prior to starting the design process, the actual progress of comparable EU-Projects and LSPs for cross-border identification and authentication and possible future synergies were analysed. The most challenging and complex topic is the bilateral authorisation of health professionals to access patient health data abroad. Due to the fact that national laws and regulations vary greatly in important points, numerous final decisions had to be solved before the start of the pilot operation phase.

For more information about the legal background visit the respective website.