VERICHIP DEALS COULD SIGNAL RFID HEALTHCARE BOOST
Human-implantable radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip manufacturer VeriChip recently made the first sale of its radio-frequency infant protection system in Canada and is in talks with the U.S. military about another under-the-skin chip.
VeriChip announced Aug. 24 that the Brampton Civic Hospital in Ontario had purchased its above-the-skin infant protection/wander prevention RFID tag system for $750,000.
The next day the company confirmed it had held informal talks with U.S. Navy and Air Force officials to discuss its VeriMed patient identification system. VeriMed is used beneath the skin.
Both moves suggest to many experts that RFID usage in the healthcare arena is ready to climb.
"I'm pretty bullish on it," Hesh Kagan, an analyst with Invensys Process, said. "The big hurdles are being knocked down."
Those hurdles include security and privacy fears, experts agree. "Security is still a concern," Kagan said. But he believes that RFID security issues are mistakenly focused on the technology. The real security and privacy weaknesses, he said, tend to have more to do with how the systems are implemented and used. "It's not a technical issue, but the human factor" that needs to be addressed, he said.
Perhaps the biggest challenge, Kagan said, is that information technology personnel usually aren't prepared to handle RFID usage. "Wireless networks require more attention than wired ones," he said.