Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ediint-hl7-02.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 07:15:33 -0400

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the Electronic Data Interchange-Internet Integration Working Group of the IETF.

	Title		: Secure HL7 Transactions using Internet Mail
	Author(s)	: G. Schadow, M. Tucker, W. Rishel
	Filename	: draft-ietf-ediint-hl7-02.txt
	Pages		: 72
	Date		: 15-Jun-99
	
This memo describes the applicability of the Internet standardization
efforts on secure electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions for
Health Level-7 (HL7), an EDI standard for healthcare used worldwide.
This memo heavily relies on the work in progress by the IETF EDIINT
working group. It is in most parts a restatement of the EDIINTs
requirements document and application statement 1 (AS#1) tailored to the
needs of the HL7 audience. We tried to make this document as self
consistent as possible. The goal is to give to the reader who is not a
security or Internet standards expert enough foundational and detail
information to enable him to build communication software that complies
to the Internet standards.
 
   Even though we rely on and promote the respective Internet standards
and drafts, we did not withstand from commenting on and criticising this
work where we see upcoming problems in use with HL7 or other EDI
protocols that have not been in the initial focus of the EDIINT working
group. We make suggestions to add parameters to the specification of the
MIME type for EDI messages [RFC 1767] in order to enhance functionality.
We give use cases for a larger subset of disposition types and modifiers
of message disposition notifications.

   One key issue where this memo goes beyond the current EDIINT drafts
is the concept of non-repudiation of commitment to an EDI transaction.
Secure EDI transactions should be regarded as ``distributed contracts,''
i.e. not only the sending and receiving of single messages should be
non-refutable but also the connection between messages interchanges. In
anticipation of this requirement HL7 usually requires a response message
to be sent to acknowledge every transaction. We therefore have the
requirement to securely couple an EDI response message to its request
message. Given the current shape of RFC 1767 this is generally possible
only if a response message is coupled with an MDN receipt and the
combi

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ediint-hl7-02.txt

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP. Login with the username
"anonymous" and a password of your e-mail address. After logging in,
type "cd internet-drafts" and then
	"get draft-ietf-ediint-hl7-02.txt".

A list of Internet-Drafts directories can be found in
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html 
or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt

Internet-Drafts can also be obtained by e-mail.

Send a message to:
	[email-masked].
In the body type:
	"FILE /internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ediint-hl7-02.txt".
	
NOTE:	The mail server at ietf.org can return the document in
	MIME-encoded form by using the "mpack" utility.  To use this
	feature, insert the command "ENCODING mime" before the "FILE"
	command.  To decode the response(s), you will need "munpack" or
	a MIME-compliant mail reader.  Different MIME-compliant mail readers
	exhibit different behavior, especially when dealing with
	"multipart" MIME messages (i.e. documents which have been split
	up into multiple messages), so check your local documentation on
	how to manipulate these messages.

Below is the data which will enable a MIME compliant mail reader
implementation to automatically retrieve the ASCII version of the
Internet-Draft.