Zombified
13th October 2004, 06:48 PM
...for quickly accessing medical information in an emergency.
I predict much freaking out by conspiracy-minded whacknuts.
As a software developer, however, I do wonder about how the technology is secured. The US law HIPAA requires a great deal of care in how health information is disseminated, and of course there is the user perception problem to be considered. It appears the chip provides only an identification number, which would satisfy the record protection problem if the actual database is properly secured, although from an emergency-handling standpoint, you ought be able to get blood type and medication allergies right from the device.
Still, if you really want to be hard core, only authorized users ought to be able to read the id out of the chip at all, and all accesses should be logged with a timestamp and an identity of the reader.
Yahoo/Reuters Article (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&e=5&u=/nm/20041013/tc_nm/health_chip_dc)
I predict much freaking out by conspiracy-minded whacknuts.
As a software developer, however, I do wonder about how the technology is secured. The US law HIPAA requires a great deal of care in how health information is disseminated, and of course there is the user perception problem to be considered. It appears the chip provides only an identification number, which would satisfy the record protection problem if the actual database is properly secured, although from an emergency-handling standpoint, you ought be able to get blood type and medication allergies right from the device.
Still, if you really want to be hard core, only authorized users ought to be able to read the id out of the chip at all, and all accesses should be logged with a timestamp and an identity of the reader.
Yahoo/Reuters Article (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&e=5&u=/nm/20041013/tc_nm/health_chip_dc)