Cryptographic Prescription System

A method, executed by one or more computers, of preparing computer-readable medical prescriptions, comprising:

• encrypting a prescription for medication with an encryption key;
• writing the encrypted prescription to a machine-readable medium;
• and
• writing a key management block to the machine-readable medium, wherein the key management block encodes information necessary to recover the encryption key and wherein decoding the key management block requires possession of one of a plurality of subsets of a universe of device keys.

A computer program product in one or more computer-readable media, comprising functional descriptive material that, when executed by a computer, causes the computer to perform actions of:

• reading, by the computer, a prescription storage medium containing a key management block and an encrypted prescription for medication;
• decrypting at least a portion of the key management block using one or more device keys associated with the computer to obtain a session key;
• decrypting the encrypted prescription using the session key to obtain a decrypted prescription;
• and
• authorizing dispensing of medication according to the decrypted prescription.

A data processing system for automatically dispensing prescription medications, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• data storage accessible to the at least one processor;
• a media reader adapted to read data storage media;
• medication dispensing authorization hardware;
• a set of one or more device keys in the data storage;
• and
• a set of instructions in the data storage, wherein the at least one processor executes the set of instructions to perform actions of
• reading, with the media reader, a prescription storage medium containing a key management block and an encrypted prescription for medication;
• decrypting at least a portion of the key management block using the one or more device keys to obtain a session key;
• decrypting the encrypted prescription using the session key to obtain a decrypted prescription;
• and
• authorizing dispensing of medication using the medication dispensing hardware according to the decrypted prescription.