Better Healthcare delivery
(Extracts from the 2008 February Review magazine)
A card that protects patients’ records yet delivers them securely and efficiently to authorized personnel, offers potentially major gains for healthcare providers and consumers alike.Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS), based in Spokane, Washington State, in the US, is a network of six sponsoring and affiliated hospitals and health centers.
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With a payroll of 600 physicians and 2.3 million patients on its files,
in 2005 its managers spotted the potential benefits—for its patients and
for itself—of a secure smart health card that could both store medical
information and serve as a secure means of payment.
To develop the concept they formed a partnership with LifeNexus, a fast-growing firm based in Colorado, dedicated to creating superior value for the consumer. The result is the Personal Health Card (PHC), which combines personal, financial and medical information on a single credential. The PHC incorporates Gemalto’s .NET smart card technology, which enables both personal and financial information to be encrypted and stored securely—a first in North America. Gemalto also provides card personalization and activation services, and has designed specialized card readers for the PHC, mostly for use by emergency personnel when a patient is incapacitated. In 2007, LifeNexus successfully demonstrated the PHC concept with
INHS. Total Systems provided back-end data processing services for the
project. INHS then began a pilot with 800 patients in January 2008. |
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Storage and retrieval of
healthcare information
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