The comprehensive objective of SEISMED (a \underbar{S}ecure \underbar{E}nvironment for \underbar{I}nformation \underbar{S}ystems in \underline{MED}icine) was to elaborate a consistent, harmonized framework for medical data protection throughout Europe. The specific technical proposals of SEISMED are thus accompanied by a high level security policy which presents the underlying principles. This approach is consistent with the forthcoming European ITSEC activity.

SEISMED proposes a suite of cryptographic mechanisms in order to provide sufficient flexibility to meet the characteristic challenges of health care data processing:

• A long tradition of decentralized processing of health care data with multilateral and legitimate interests.

• Ultra high sensitivity of personal medical data whose disclosure might not be repairable by, e.g. smart-money.

• Long periods of time (up to 30 years) over which health care data must be archived in its original state.

A 20 man-month workpackage evaluated the pertinent cryptographic literature, other relevant EC-projects (RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation project RIPE), and renowned conferences (IACR Crypto, IACR Eurocrypt, ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science, IEEE Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy, etc.). The result is a cryptographic guideline which is presented by separate documents to three different target audiences.