EN ISO 21091:2013 PDF

Overview

EN ISO 21091:2013 / ISO 21091:2013 - "Health informatics - Directory services for healthcare providers, subjects of care and other entities" - defines minimal, healthcare‑specific specifications for directory services. It supports secure exchange of healthcare information over public networks by specifying common directory information and services used for identification, communication addressing, and security support across organizations, devices, servers and application components.

Key topics and technical requirements

• Directory scope and purpose: Community‑level directory services designed to support inter‑enterprise, inter‑jurisdictional and international healthcare communications.
• Healthcare schema: Standardized directory content models for healthcare persons, organization identities, roles/job functions/groups and related attributes.
• Naming and structure: Guidance on namespace/tree structure and Distinguished Names (DNs) including Relative Distinguished Names (RDNs).
• Security support: Directory support for confidentiality, access control and authentication; integration with public key infrastructure (PKI) for certificate distribution and certificate status information.
• Communication details: Specification of addresses and protocols for communication entities; designed to interoperate with LDAP clients, interface engines and SOA implementations.
• Interoperability: Minimum requirements to enable reliable lookups, single sign‑on support, and attribute exchange to inform authorization decisions.
• Extensibility and governance: Emphasis on extensible registration/management, distributed operation, and the need for policies and processes to ensure data integrity and role‑based privileges (e.g., assigning HCOrganizationalRole and related rights).

Practical applications and users

Who uses ISO 21091:2013:

• Health IT architects and system integrators implementing directory services for hospitals, regional health information exchanges (HIEs) and national eHealth infrastructures.
• Identity and access management (IAM) teams integrating LDAP/PKI for clinician authentication, single sign‑on and authorization.
• Software vendors building EHR interfaces, middleware, SOA services and certificate registries.
• Policy makers and data stewards defining directory governance, role management and inter‑organizational trust.

Typical applications:

• Publishing and retrieving healthcare professional and organization identifiers and contact information.
• Distributing and validating digital certificates and certificate revocation/status via directory lookups.
• Enabling secure message routing, device addressing and service discovery across healthcare systems.

Related standards

• ISO/HL7 27931:2009 (HL7 v2.5 messaging)
• X.509 (certificates and attribute certificates), PKI standards
• ISO/IEC and other ISO health informatics standards referenced in the document

ISO 21091:2013 is published as EN ISO 21091:2013 by CEN and is intended as a foundation for interoperable, secure healthcare directory services. Keywords: ISO 21091:2013, health informatics, directory services, healthcare directory, LDAP, PKI, access control, healthcare identifiers, HCOrganizationalRole.