Sean Nolan, chief architect of Microsoft’s HealthVault service, posted an article about giving their users choice for the identities they use to access their information. He announced that in addition to accepting LiveIDs, HealthVault is about to start accepting OpenIDs from two OpenID Providers and is also building native Information Card support. As Sean wrote:
As we’ve always said, HealthVault is about consumer control — empowering individuals with tools that let them choose how to share and safeguard their personal health information. OpenID support is a natural fit for this approach, because it allows users to choose the “locksmith” that they are most comfortable with.
You can certainly expect to see more such options in the future. For example, we are in the process of building in native support for Information Cards, which provide some unique advantages, in particular around foiling phishing attempts.
Talking about OpenID, Sean also wrote:
As we learn more, and as OpenID continues to mature, we fully expect to broaden the set of providers that work with HealthVault. We believe that a critical part of that expansion is the formalization and adoption of PAPE, which gives relying parties a richer set of tools to determine if they are comfortable with the policies of an identity provider.
Please join me in congratulating the HealthVault team on being the first Microsoft service to employ OpenID and for their commitment to providing their users convenient, secure access to their healthcare data.
Ben Toth
Ben Toth