Smart Cards

From Information Week, via Medgadget:

Mount Sinai Medical Center, along with eight affiliated hospitals, next spring plans to begin deploying more than 100,000 smart cards to its patients. In total, there will be more than 45 related and affiliated health facilities in the region involved with the smart card initiative.

The project, which will be rolled out in phases and might eventually provide the facilities' 500,000 patients with smart cards, could also serve as a model for a regional health information network effort in New York City overall, which has a population of about 8 million, says Mount Sinai VP of IT Paul Contino.

The cards, which will also feature a photo of the patient, are embedded with a "secure microchip" that will contain demographic information—like patient name and address—and also medical history, drug prescription and allergy, recent lab results, and other key data, says Contino. The information can be updated whenever a patient receives new health services or has a change in health status. The cards, which are read by devices that can attach to PCs, require that patients enter a PIN before the chip's data can be accessed. If cards are lost or stolen, information cannot be accessed without the PIN, Contino says.