The German electronic doctor's license: the introduction of a health professional card.

The rapid increase of the use of electronic communication in the healthcare sector in the last decade made it more and more important to implement an appropriate general security infrastructure. Improved security is necessary for both patients and health professionals. One corner stone in all these concepts is the introduction of the so-called Health Professional Card as an important security tool. Accordingly, the professional organisations for physicians in Germany started to introduce a standardised electronic identity card for their members at the end of the nineties. The existing physicians' identity paper will be transformed into an electronic identity document as a prototype for a Health Professional Card for all German health professionals. The main goal is to achieve a high level of standardisation and interoperability. Thus, all activities were carried out in close cooperation with different national and international institutions, organisations and working groups.