Secure electronic transfer of prescriptions (ETP) for the United Kingdom National Health Service

This thesis describes an investigation by the author into the provision of a secure Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP) system for the United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service (NHS). Initially an investigation is carried out into why ETP is needed and the barriers to the successful implementation of an ETP system concentrating both on a literature review of the field and the authors own field analysis work. The author then presents a detailed design for an ETP system including how he has solved the various research issues involved. These research issues include how to create a usable system designed to protect patient privacy. For this research issue the author presents a unique solution, the use of symmetric keys within barcode structures. As part of his research the author has also generated an Application Programming Interface (API) for his design. This can be used in conjunction with previously existing NHS client software to facilitate the adoption of the authors design in practice. Finally, the author details project evaluative work including quantitative performance analysis of the system and qualitative focus group studies. This work was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number GR/M83483. The work presented in this Thesis forms the basis of multiple research papers which can be found at http:\\sec.isi.salford.ac.uk\