scope:

This standard defines minimal specifications for directory services for health care. This standard can be used to enable communications between organizations, devices, servers, application components, systems, technical actors, and devices. This standard provides the common directory information and services needed to support the secure exchange of health care information over public networks where directory information and services are used for these purposes. This specification addresses the health directory from a community perspective in anticipation of supporting inter-enterprise, inter-jurisdiction, and international health care communications. While several options are supported by this standard a given service will not need to include all of the options. Besides technical security measures that are discussed in other ISO standards, communication of health care data requires a reliable accountable "chain of trust." In order to maintain this chain of trust within a public key infrastructure, users (relying parties) must be able to obtain current correct certificates and certificate status information through secure directory management. In addition to the support of security services such as access control and confidentiality, the standard shall provide specification for other aspects of communication, such as addresses and protocols of communication entities. This standard also supports directory services aiming to support identification of health professionals and organizations and the subjects of care. . The health care directory will support standard LDAP Client searches, interface engines for message transformation, and SOA implementations to enable the service in any environment. Specific implementation guidance, search criteria and support are out of scope of this document.