Identity threat: There are three concerns here. First, the
patient may lose (or share) their identity credentials,
enabling others to have access to their PHI in the EHR (or
in their mobile node (MN)). Second, insiders may use
patient identities for medical fraud, for example, by
submitting fraudulent insurance claims. The result can be
financially or even medically damaging to the patient.
Furthermore, in the growing problem of medical identity
theft, outsiders (or insiders) may use a patient’s identity to
obtain medical services, potentially with financial or
medical damage to the patient. Finally, in some settings
patient identities are removed from the PHI, and the risk is
that an outsider may combine the de-identified data with
data from another source to re-identify the patients, that is,
to re-link patient identity to their PHI.