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Both helpful and terrifying: Smart card embedded with your health records

A British company is selling an eCard that contains an electronic copy of an individual’s medical records.

By on April 30, 2014

I saw this go by on Twitter this week. I would love to have my and my kids’ medical records in my wallet, but it would be one more thing to worry about losing. This is identify theft delivered on a silver platter. The most recent example of fraud enabled by lost medical records comes from a security breach at UPMC. Employees of UPMC were victims of identity theft due to lost health records: 22 employees went to file tax returns only to find that the forms had already been submitted for refunds in their names. The scheme allows fraudsters to pocket refunds from the bogus filings.

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A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma

A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.

By PurpleLab

Certainly you would set a password for the card, but just as surely hackers would be able to break this security measure. This thing needs a fingerprint scanner like the new iPhones have.

All the information is entered by the user, so the card would not represent a complete medical record. But, imagine if it were wirelessly connected to an HIE or an EHR. Every time you walked into your doctor’s office, your data would update automatically. Again, a helpful but scary proposition.

Here are the details on how this eCard works.

My Medical eCard is a credit card shaped USB device, personalized with your name and photo. Within the card are easy to complete, blank medical forms.

The medical forms include basic demographics, like name and address, basic medical information, like your blood group, genotype, allergies, pertinent medical information like diabetic, asthmatic, epileptic, medication etc.

Additional forms cover contact details for In Case of Emergency, health insurance, doctors, medical providers, such dentists, opticians, therapists; medical history (current, past, family, social), medical activity log, such as lists of visits to the doctor, dentists, therapists etc, a blood pressure log, blood sugar log, medical bills, medico-legal directives and any other notes.

You can update your Medical eDiary on your computer. You can save your Medical eDiary on your personal cloud space, such as Drop Box, Sky Drive and update it by accessing it, using your personal access log in details to your cloud space.

You can also scan and save medical documents from your medical providers, such as doctors letters, test results, scans etc and save them along with your Medical eDiary, keeping them all well organized.