[Shadow_Group] Fw: Medical milestone privacy invasion

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/>

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Oct. 13, 2004WASHINGTON - Medical milestone or
privacy invasion? A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for
implantation in a patient's arm can speed vital information about a
patient's medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that
it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.

advertisement
 
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital
Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an
implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical
purposes.

With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in
a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches.
Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases
patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.

Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its
name and price on the cashier's screen.

Chip's dual uses raise alarm
The VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be
scanned, and revealed, in a doctor's office or hospital. With that code,
the health providers can unlock that portion of a secure database that
holds that person's medical information, including allergies and prior
treatment. The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with
each medical visit.

The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the
chip's possible dual use for tracking people's movements - as well as
speeding delivery of their medical information to emergency rooms - has
raised alarm.

"If privacy protections aren't built in at the outset, there could be
harmful consequences for patients," said Emily Stewart, a policy analyst
at the Health Privacy Project.

To protect patient privacy, the devices should reveal only vital medical
information, like blood type and allergic reactions, needed for health
care workers to do their jobs, Stewart said.

An information technology guru at Detroit Medical Center, however, sees
the benefits of the devices and will lobby for his center's inclusion in
a VeriChip pilot program.

"One of the big problems in health care has been the medical records
situation. So much of it is still on paper," said David Ellis, the
center's chief futurist and co-founder of the Michigan Electronic Medical
Records Initiative.

'Part of the future of medicine'
As "medically mobile" patients visit specialists for care, their records
fragment on computer systems that don't talk to each other.

"It's part of the future of medicine to have these kinds of technologies
that make life simpler for the patient," Ellis said. Pushing for the
strongest encryption algorithms to ensure hackers can't nab medical data
as information transfers from chip to reader to secure database, will
help address privacy concerns, he said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced
$139 million in grants to help make real President Bush's push for
electronic health records for most Americans within a decade.

William A. Pierce, an HHS spokesman, could not say whether VeriChip and
its accompanying secure database of medical records fit within that
initiative.

"Exactly what those technologies are is still to be sorted out," Pierce
said. "It all has to respect and comport with the privacy rules."

Applied Digital gave away scanners to a few hundred animal shelters and
veterinary clinics when it first entered the pet market 15 years ago.
Now, 50,000 such scanners have been sold.

To kickstart the chip's use among humans, Applied Digital will provide
$650 scanners for free at 200 of the nation's trauma centers.

Implantation costs $150 to $200
In pets, installing the chip runs about $50. For humans, the chip
implantation cost would be $150 to $200, said Angela Fulcher, an Applied
Digital spokeswoman.

Fulcher could not say whether the cost of data storage and encrypted
transmission of medical information would be passed to providers.

Because the VeriChip is invisible, it's also unclear how health care
workers would know which unconscious patients to scan. Company officials
say if the chip use becomes routine, scanning triceps for hidden chips
would become second nature at hospitals.

Ultimately, the company hopes patients who suffer from such ailments as
diabetes and Alzheimer's or who undergo complex treatments, like
chemotherapy, would have chips implanted. If the procedure proves as
popular for use in humans as in pets, that could mean up to 1 million
chips implanted in people. So far, just 1,000 people across the globe
have had the devices implanted, very few of them in the United States.

The company's chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, is one of a
half dozen executives who had chips implanted. Silverman said chips
implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like
tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

Such security uses are rare in the United States.

Meanwhile, the chip has been used for pure whimsy: Club hoppers in
Barcelona, Spain, now use the microchip to enter a VIP area and, through
links to a different database, speed payment much like a smartcard.
To unsubscribe to the MOM list send an email to mom-l-unsubscribe @mailman.montana.com


---

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/shadowgroup-l/attachments/20041014/bf6863bd/attachment.html>