Patent Issued for Strong authentication via distributed stations (USPTO 11842803): Imprivata Inc.

2024 JAN 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Ullrich, Meinhard Dieter (Lexington, MA, US), filed on April 4, 2022, was published online on December 12, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11842803 is assigned to Imprivata Inc. (Lexington, Massachusetts, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In a busy healthcare environment, such as a hospital, clinicians roam frequently among patients, floors and buildings. Each time a clinician reaches a new location, she may require access to patient information or other medical data maintained by the facility (or elsewhere). That data may be accessed via a local, typically shared workstation, or via a handheld wireless device, such as a “smart phone” or tablet capable of hosting applications and establishing telecommunications, Internet and/or local intranet connections.

“In particular, medical institutions from hospitals to physician practice groups to testing centers maintain diverse electronic medical records (EMR) systems, which collectively form the healthcare information backbone. EMR systems allow clinicians access to medical information maintained in various back-end systems. The typical workflow when a physician interacts with a patient involves first logging onto the computer system, then launching and logging into one or more EMR applications, selecting the right patient record, verifying that the record matches the patient, reviewing results (often from different sources), checking up on medical references, entering orders or prescriptions (e.g., using computerized physician order entry (CPOE) applications and ePrescribing), and/or charting patient progress. All of these activities may involve the same patient but different applications, and in some cases multiple separate applications for a single patient-specific activity.

“Moreover, healthcare records are protected by strict privacy laws (such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA), regulatory regimes, and institutional access policies. Accordingly, when a clinician moves from place to place, he may be required to log on to a new terminal or device, and because of data-access restrictions, the log-on procedure may involve cumbersome and/or multiple authentication modalities.

“Indeed, for some highly sensitive transactions, a properly authenticated and logged-in user may be asked to re-authenticate using a stronger form of authentication. For example, the user may be asked to provide a fingerprint to a reader complying with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 201-2, a one-time token or a smart card in order to satisfy an institutional policy or regulatory requirement. Particularly in an environment where nodes can be moved, and where users may access system resources using a personal wireless phone or tablet lacking sophisticated authentication modalities, the user may confront the need to search quickly, in stressful circumstances, for an available workstation with the appropriate authentication capability.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In various embodiments, authentication stations are distributed within a facility, particularly in spaces where mobile devices are predominantly used-e.g., in a hospital’s emergency department. Each such station includes a series of authentication devices, ideally spanning the range of possible modalities required of users, e.g., a FIPS-compliant fingerprint reader, a proximity-card reader, a smart-card reader, a vein reader, an iris scanner, a soft token application, etc. The mobile device may run an application (“app”) for locating the nearest such station and, in some embodiments, pair wirelessly with the station so that authentication thereon will accord the user access to the desired resource via her mobile device. The authentication stations may be dedicated, stand-alone devices (e.g., deployed as kiosks). But in some embodiments, if a nearby workstation or other network node is not presently in use and has the needed authentication modality, the user may be guided to that node.

“Accordingly, in a first aspect, the invention relates to a method of authentication and log-on to access a secure resource via a computer network. In various embodiments, the method comprises the steps of sending, via a computational device, an access request to a secure resource via a network; receiving, from the secure resource, a user authentication requirement involving an authentication modality; locating, via a mobile device, a nearest authentication station supporting the authentication modality; establishing wireless communication between the mobile device and the authentication station; obtaining, by the authentication station using the authentication modality, authentication credentials from a user; causing transmission of the authentication credentials to the authentication server; receiving, by the authentication station, an authentication confirmation from the authentication server and, via multiple-party communication among the mobile device, the authentication station, the computational device, and the secure resource, according access to the secure resource via the computational device.

“The mobile device may be the computational device or may be different from, but in wireless communication with, the computational device. In various embodiments, the step of establishing wireless communication between the mobile device and the authentication station comprises claiming, by the mobile device, the authentication station until the authentication credentials have been received by the authentication station.

“The multiple-party communication may comprise wirelessly communicating, by the authentication station via a secure link, the obtained authentication credentials to the wireless device, and wirelessly communicating, by the wireless device via a secure link, the authentication credentials to the authentication server. In one example of this flow the computational device is different from the wireless device, and the method further comprises wirelessly communicating, by the authentication station to the wireless device via a secure link, a token indicating acceptance of the obtained authentication credentials, and wirelessly communicating, by the wireless device via a secure link, the token to the computational device, whereby access to the secure resource is accorded to the computational device.

“In some embodiments, the multiple-party communication comprises wirelessly communicating, by the wireless device via a secure link to the authentication server, the authentication credentials and session data identifying a session between an application running on the wireless device and the secure resource; and causing, by the authentication server, the computational device to be accorded access to the secure resource over the session.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for facilitating user authentication and enabling access to secure resources via a computer network using an authentication modality, the system comprising: a computer network; a plurality of computational devices each configured to provide user access to one or more secure resources via the computer network but lacking the authentication modality; an authentication server; and a plurality of authentication stations each being different from the authentication server and each being configured to (i) receive, using the authentication modality, authentication credentials from a user located at the authentication station, (ii) transmit the authentication credentials to the authentication server, and (iii) receive an authentication confirmation from the authentication server; wherein user access to the one or more secure resources at one or more of the computational devices is enabled by the authentication confirmation.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the authentication stations comprises one or more of a fingerprint reader, a proximity-card reader, a smart-card reader, a vein reader, an iris scanner, or a soft token application.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the authentication stations comprises two or more of a fingerprint reader, a proximity-card reader, a smart-card reader, a vein reader, an iris scanner, or a soft token application.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein at least some of the computational devices are mobile devices of users.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the authentication stations are not configured to provide user access to one or more secure resources via the computer network.

“6. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or more second computational devices each configured to provide user access to one or more secure resources via the computer network and each comprising the authentication modality, each second computational device being configured to function as an authentication station when not being otherwise utilized by a user.

“7. The system of claim 6, further comprising a location server maintaining a database relating the second computational devices to their physical locations.

“8. The system of claim 7, wherein the database relates the second computational devices to their use statuses.

“9. The system of claim 7, wherein the database relates the authentication stations to their physical locations.

“10. The system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the authentication stations is configured for wireless communication with mobile devices of users.

“11. The system of claim 1, further comprising a location server maintaining a database relating the authentication stations to their physical locations.

“12. A system enabling access to secure resources, on a mobile device of a user via a computer network using an authentication modality, wherein the mobile device lacks the authentication modality, the system comprising: a computer network; an authentication server; and a plurality of authentication stations each being different from the authentication server and each being configured to (i) receive, using the authentication modality, authentication credentials from a user located at the authentication station, and (ii) transmit the authentication credentials to the authentication server and/or to the mobile device of the user; wherein the authentication server is configured to issue an authentication confirmation based on the authentication credentials, the authentication confirmation enabling access to the secure resources to the user on the mobile device.

“13. The system of claim 12, wherein the authentication server is configured to receive the authentication credentials from an authentication station and transmit the authentication confirmation to said authentication station.

“14. The system of claim 12, wherein the authentication server is configured to receive the authentication credentials from an authentication station and transmit the authentication confirmation to the mobile device.

“15. The system of claim 12, wherein the authentication server is configured to receive the authentication credentials from the mobile device and transmit the authentication confirmation to the mobile device.

“16. The system of claim 12, wherein the mobile device comprises a display and a mapping application configured to cause a map showing a current location of the mobile device and a location of at least one said authentication station to appear on the display.

“17. The system of claim 12, wherein the mobile device is configured to wirelessly claim an identified authentication station until the authentication credentials have been received by the authentication station.

“18. The system of claim 12, wherein at least one authentication station is configured to be claimed, via wireless communication with the mobile device, until the authentication credentials have been received by the authentication station or until a predetermined time period has elapsed.

“19. The system of claim 12, wherein at least one of the authentication stations comprises one or more of a fingerprint reader, a proximity-card reader, a smart-card reader, a vein reader, an iris scanner, or a soft token application.

“20. The system of claim 12, wherein at least one of the authentication stations comprises two or more of a fingerprint reader, a proximity-card reader, a smart-card reader, a vein reader, an iris scanner, or a soft token application.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Ullrich, Meinhard Dieter. Strong authentication via distributed stations. U.S. Patent Number 11842803, filed April 4, 2022, and published online on December 12, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11842803)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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