Smart Card: What Is A Medical Smart Card?

1857 Words4 Pages

1. WHAT IS SMART CARD? The wallet-sized medical smart card, embedded with a programmable computer chip, stores and transmits a cardholder's clinical, insurance coverage and biographical information. Smart cards differ along four main dimensions: 1. Memory: from 1 to 16 kb (there are currently prototypes with 64 kb); 2. Processor speed: from 4 to 16 MHz; 3. Interaction: physical contact, proximity (near-contact, but no wearout), and radio; 4. Software: card operating system and installed applications. When fully deployed, smart cards will conduct many functions at the point of care, from claims submission to medical records updates in real time. Ultimately, the smart card will make the individual patient record and all clinical and economic …show more content…

In this regard, they are also safe because the cards can be easily replaced, and only the owner of the card know the pin number to access its stored value. This takes care of the problem with cash; once it is stolen it is nearly impossible to trace and recover it. c) Double as an ID card Smart cards also can provide complete identification in certain industries like healthcare. There are numerous benefits of using smart cards for identification. In circumstance like there is a patient who is brought in unconscious or unable to speak, these cards can be used by health professionals to identify him or her to give the appropriate treatments. Now, there’s smart health cards that can improve the security and privacy of patient information which can reduce healthcare fraud. They also support new processes for portable medical records and provide secure access to emergency medical information. HOW DO SMART CARDS WORK A smart card connects to a card reader either through direct physical contact or through a remote, contactless radio frequency (RF) interface. A typical smart card has a plastic card body, a chip embedded in the body, and a contact plate. The contact plate ( usually gold-plated) is visible on the surface of the card. (Figure …show more content…

The NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) and related Connecting for Health (CfH) project use NHS CRS smart cards that help control the authority and levels of access to NHS CRS. The NHS runs trials piloting contact-less smart card readers, which help avoid the physical presence of the patient at the point of care, thus reducing time and effort. Besides this, Occupational Health Smart Cards (OHSC) was introduced in the UK in 2001. These cards offer rationalized, reliable and secured means of occupational health data capture, storage and sharing, thus ensuring quality of healthcare

More about Smart Card: What Is A Medical Smart Card?

Open Document