Authentication and Authorization
The eHealth Infrastructure has two Authorization Services (AS) configurations providing authentication and authorization for client systems and internal use.
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Authorization Service Configurations
The Authorization Service configurations support the following user types of the eHealth Infrastructure:
citizen
clinical and administrative employee
service, support & logistics (SSL) supplier employee
system users
system administrator users
The AS configurations consist of:
One KeyCloak with
realm ehealth - for clinical and administrative employee login
realm nemlogin - for citizen login
One SSL KeyCloak with
realm SSL - SSL supplier employee login
System users and system administrator users exist in all realms.
Authentication and Authorization Flow
The login protocol between the client systems and the login component is the OpenID Authentication Code Flow of OpenID Connect 1.0.
Further details on the client’s initiation are described in https://ehealth-dk.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/EDTW/pages/2238644241. As a reaction, the Authorization Service initiates a federation of authentication and possibly authorization depending on the realm:
realm nemlogin is federated to Nemlogin
realm eHealth is federated to SEB (in Danish: Sundhedsvæsenets Elektroniske Brugerstyring shortened SEB) which is a common platform for user administration of the solutions provided by the National Health Data Authority
realm SSL is/can be federated to SSL suppliers' IdPs
In non-production environments, login without this federation actually taking place can be simulated through use of the so-called mocked users. Mocked users are authenticated (and authorized depending on variant) in the eHealth Authentication Services.
After successful authentication, three tokens are issued for separate purposes:
an ID token – information for the client system about the authenticated user.
an Access Token (AT) – a token with a relatively short period of validity (a few minutes), which the client systems must include in all service requests.
a Refresh Token (RT) – a token with long validity, which can be used to renew the AT, thereby extending or resuming the session without the user having to authenticate again.
The set of services and service operations that the client is authorized to use privileges is conveyed through the Access Token. The set depends on user type and/or federated authentication. The eHealth services perform access control based on the Access Token, often constrained by additional contexts that must be set in the Access Token.
Authorization Based on User Type and Contexts set in the Access Token
The eHealth infrastructure defines the following contexts:
Organization Context
Careteam Context
Patient Context
Episode of Care Context
The following is an informative overview of user types must present what contexts. The normative mapping is described in https://ehealth-dk.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/EDTW/pages/1695842461.
Citizen User Type and Contexts
A citizen user type is authorized to see almost all data about the citizen.
This user type will have the Patient Context set.
In general, modifying data requires the Episode of Care Context to be set.
Citizens that logs into the infrastructure using NemID are looked up as FHIR Patient resources with the social security number found in the SAML assertion. If a match is found, the FHIR Patient resource ID will be present in the Refresh Token handed back to the client. If no match to a FHIR Patient resource is found, no FHIR Patient resource ID will be present in the Refresh Token. This means that citizens that are not part of any treatment in the infrastructure will be allowed to login, but won't have any rights to read or write any data.