Provider+Directories+Overview

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Mission
Enable health care participants to look up digital certificates, which are used to encrypt data, to facilitate the secure exchange of health information through the Direct Project.

Background

 * A provider directory is an electronic, searchable resource that lists names, addresses, and other relevant information for individuals and organizations working in the health care domain.
 * The S&I Framework's Direct Project establishes standards and documentation to support simple scenarios of pushing data from where it is to where it's needed, in a way that will support more sophisticated interoperability in the future.

Challenge

 * Health information exchange requires mechanisms that allow providers to both identify and locate one another and transfer electronic health records in a secure manner.
 * Direct Project users need to query and obtain electronic service information from provider directories and use this information to locate digital certificates in order to encrypt health records prior to electronic exchange.

Solution
The Provider Directories Initiative is developing use cases, core datasets, data models, schemas, and guidelines to support the querying of provider directories in two ways:
 * 1) The discovery of electronic service information, such as health care provider email address
 * 2) The discovery of digital certificates using electronic service information

These efforts will provide Direct Project users mechanisms to locate providers and exchange health information in a secure manner.

Initiative Organization
The Providers Directories Initiative is divided into two complementary sub-workgroups dedicated to achieving the same end goal: //the secure exchange of health information across organizational boundaries.//

The two workgroups are developing systems to help health care providers locate digital certificates. The first workgroup, Certificate Discovery for Direct Project, considers the case in which the sender of health information knows where to aquire the receiver's digital certificate. The second workgroup, Electronic Service Information Discovery, considers the case in which the sender needs to learn where to aquire the receiver's digital certificate. In either case, once the sender aquires the receiver's digital certiciate, they can encrypt the health information they wish to transfer.


 * || ===//Certificate Discovery for Direct Project//=== ||  ||   ||
 * || This volunteer-led effort is developing implementation guidelines to support the discovery and retrieval of a digital certificate from a directory service. The workgroup is focused on the use of both DNS and LDAP based directory services. This solution allows a greater number of implementers to effectively enable certificate discovery and management. ||  || [[image:siframework/Use_Case_1_Recommendation.png width="300" height="282" align="left"]] || [[image:siframework/CC_White_Space.png]] ||

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 * || ===Electronic Service Information Discovery=== ||  ||   ||   ||
 * || This volunteer-led effort is developing a data model to support the querying of provider directories to discover electronic service information. The workgroup is aligning the data model to HPD and X12, two electronic data interchange standards popular in the health care community. The data model will be standards agnostic and extensible to other standards. || [[image:siframework/PD_Use_Cases_Combined_Linear.png width="306" height="341" align="right"]] ||  || [[image:siframework/CC_White_Space.png]] ||