Patent ID: 8856064

Claim:
A method of preparing a document for transfer between a remote site and a central processing facility, the document including medical information corresponding to one or more patients, the method comprising: determining whether a size of the document exceeds a size threshold; for each of the one or more patients, and prior to producing a message: identifying, in the document, one or more items of identification information associated with the patient, generating an anonymous global patient identifier by encrypting at least one of the items of identification information, and replacing the items of identification information in the document with the anonymous global patient identifier; computing a first checksum for the document that is compared with a second checksum at the central processing facility to verify the integrity of the medical information; combining the document with first header information to produce the message when the size of the document does not exceed the size threshold; and generating a link to a location storing the document and combining the link with second header information to produce the message when the size of the document exceeds the size threshold.