gms | German Medical Science

The EUropean Patient IDentity (EUPID) Services enable privacy-preserving record linkage and secondary use of health data for research from/in different contexts like biobanks and clinical trials. To further simplify the usage of the EUPID Services and the handling of EUPID pseudonyms, the use of QR codes was explored. Therefore, a mobile application was developed. This app included the functionalities of the already existing EUPID web- application. Additionally, the app was able to generate QR-Codes for registered patients, scan these codes and display their contents. The generated barcodes contained the pseudonym of the patient and the context in which this pseudonym was registered. Optionally, in addition to these parameters, more encrypted identity data of the patient, like e.g., the first name, last name and date of birth could be included in the QR codes. Asymmetric encryption was used. The public key was provided via the EUPID Api, while the private key could be stored on the user’s phone. By this, authorized users could decrypt the identity information of the patient, while default users only saw the pseudonym when scanning the QR code with the developed app. Introducing this app to clinical settings is expected to reduce the risk of a) typing errors etc. when using EUPID pseudonyms, since pseudonyms are read out automatically via the QR codes, and b) mistaken identities, since names are shown to authorized users instead of pseudonyms only. This will especially support healthcare workers who regularly switch between EUPID pseudonyms and real identities of patients.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.