Applications of Biometrics in Health Care Industry

We hear all the time about the mistakes that are made within our healthcare system these days.  Records are mixed up, medical charts are confused, and the wrong medication is given to the wrong patient.  Privacy in healthcare is a huge issue in these days, especially given the fact that most computer networks are vulnerable to attack or intrusion. 

There is a desperate race going on to find the best method of securing your data and preventing mistakes with consequences that range from embarrassing to deadly. Healthcare has struggled with pinpointing a technology that will solve the problem of patient misidentification and the impact it has on the quality of care, patient safety, and the financial health of the industry.

Finally, a solution has been found. Biometrics has revolutionized the healthcare security industry.  Biometrics devices can take unique information about you from your eye, or your hand print, or your thumb print and use it to identify you.  Biometrics is making it possible for patients and healthcare professionals both to feel secure that their information is being kept confidential and only being released to those who have the right to see it.

Using biometrics for patient identification has not only addressed these problems but it has also drastically altered the functionality of biometric technology from a resource to weed out miscreants to a life or death identification tool. 

Medical facilities who once struggled with problems of

• Medical identity theft
• Patient misidentification
• Sending a baby home with the wrong mother
• The proliferation of duplicate medical records
• someone without authorization is trying to access patient’s secure data

Can now use biometric identification technology too accurately and identify patients to safeguard health and prevent unnecessary and financially taxing medical treatment.

In this struggling economy, those in the healthcare industry have realized that the money needed to invest in biometric technology is outweighed by the money they will lose to fraud, fraud prevention and the consequences of mistakes that could have been prevented if they were using the technology.  They are jumping on the biometric bandwagon in droves.  This is a fast growing industry, and it’s changing the look of healthcare security rapidly.

Regards,

Inttelix