[tt] [PloS Med] Debate: Fitting Patients with RFID

[Christian Weisgerber]

What Are the Benefits and Risks of Fitting Patients with Radiofrequency
Identification Devices
Levine M, Adida B, Mandl K, Kohane I, Halamka J
PLoS Medicine Vol. 4, No. 11, e322 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040322  

Background to the debate: In 2004, the United States Food and Drug
Administration approved a radiofrequency identification (RFID) device
that is implanted under the skin of the upper arm of patients and that
stores the patient's medical identifier. When a scanner is passed over
the device, the identifier is displayed on the screen of an RFID reader.
An authorized health professional can then use the identifier to access
the patient's clinical information, which is stored in a separate,
secure database. Such RFID devices may have many medical benefits--such
as expediting identification of patients and retrieval of their medical
records. But critics of the technology have raised several concerns,
including the risk of the patient's identifying information being used
for nonmedical purposes.

Mark Levine's Viewpoint:
RFID Devices Have the Potential to Improve Medical Care
  ...

Ben Adida, Kenneth Mandl, and Isaac Kohane's Viewpoint:
RFID Implantation May Invade Privacy
  ...

John Halamka's Viewpoint:
RFID Devices Enable Patients to Be Stewards of Their Own Health Data
  ...

Full article:
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040322

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy at mips.inka.de