Why use a Smartcard in healthcare?
Except in the USA, healthcare organizations worldwide are implementing smart health cards supporting a wide variety of features and applications. Smart health cards can improve the security and privacy of patient information, provide the secure carrier for portable medical records, reduce healthcare fraud, support new processes for portable medical records, provide secure access to emergency medical information, enable compliance with government initiatives and mandates, and provide the platform to implement other applications as needed by the healthcare organization.
Smart cards have significant benefits:
First, smart cards are highly secure.
◾ Smart cards embedded with microprocessors can encrypt and securely store information.
◾ Smart cards can allow access to stored information only to authorized users. Rules for accessing medical information can be enforced by the smart card, even when used offline.
◾ Smart cards support strong authentication for accessing personal health information. In addition, smart cards support personal identification numbers and biometrics (e.g., a fingerprint).
◾ Smart cards support digital signatures, which can be used to determine that the card was issued by a valid organization and that the data on the card has not been fraudulently altered.
◾ Smart cards use secure chip technology and are designed and manufactured with features that help to deter counterfeiting and thwart tampering.
◾ Smart cards can help to reduce healthcare fraud by providing strong identity authentication of patients and providers.
The use of secure smart chip technology, makes it extremely difficult for unauthorized users to access information on a smart card or to create duplicate cards.
Second, smart cards provide the capacity to store healthcare information on the card and the flexibility for securely adding information to a patient healthcare card after issuance. For healthcare applications, this can deliver several benefits.
◾ Patient healthcare information and prescriptions can be stored on the card and updated after issuance, providing up-to-date information when a patient is receiving medical care in an emergency situation.
◾ Patient healthcare information can be written to and updated on the card by authorized healthcare providers.
World Inter-Med's EMERgE is the first to implement smartcard technology
http://igg.me/at/emerge/x/8873226
Thx -b