Ethical Implications of Placing Implantable Chips in Patients

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The placement of implantable chips into patients for the purpose of accurately identifying patients and properly storing their medical history records has become a subject of a strong debate. Making sure patients are properly identified before a procedure and storing their health history records for future use has been difficult, if not impossible. The idea of being able to retrieve accurate patient’s medical history for a follow up care without relying on patient’s memory is a challenging task for many healthcare organizations. Many ideas and technologies have been introduced over the years to help solve this problem, but unfortunately the problem is still not fully resolved. There are still many errors in the healthcare due in part by improper record keeping and inaccurate patient identification. One idea that has being in discussion to eliminate these problems for good, is the introduction of a chip or radio frequency identification (RFID) technology implanted into human for the purpose storing medical data and accurately identify patients. VeriChip Corporation is currently the maker of this implantable RFID chip. They are the only corporation cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make this implantable radio frequency transponder system for humans for the purpose of identifying patients and storing their health history information. The chip was first developed for the use of radar systems by Scottish physicist, Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt in 1935 just before World War II. (Roberti, 2007). This technology helps identify approaching planes of the enemy from mile away. Today, RFID has several uses. It is used for animal tracking. It is attached to merchandise in stores to prevent theft. It can be instal... ... middle of paper ... ...(2010). Convenience and safety vs. privacy: the ethics of RFID. Retrieved March 2012 from http://ethicapublishing.com Pillows. J. (2007). Trust-worthy computing: Privacy issues (RFID). Retrieved Marc 2012, from www.citebm.business.illinois.edu Roberti, M. (2007). The History of RFID technology. RetrievedMarch, 2012, from http://rfidjournal.com/article Wolinsky, H. (2006, October). Tagging products and people. espite much controversy; radiofrequency identification chips have great potential in healthcare. Science and Society, 7(10), 965-968. Wen, Y., Chao-Hsien, C., and Zang, L. (2010). The use of RFID in healthcare. Benefits and barriers. Retrieved March 2012 from http://personal.psu.edu. Woo, A., Ranji, U., & Salganicoff, A. (2008). Reducing medical errors with technology. Retrieved March, 2012, from http://kaiseredu.org

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