This article was originally published by RFID Update.
November 1, 2004—The management of information in the healthcare industry is woefully inadequate despite the fact that, according to Boston Consulting Group, it accounts for one third of healthcare’s overall cost. So it makes sense that Applied Digital Solutions would market its recently FDA-approved VeriChip technology as an innovative solution to patient record-keeping. But does VeriChip really address the healthcare industry’s information management problem? The author of this article at Electronic Business doesn’t think so, arguing that healthcare suffers from systemic information technology shortcomings. He notes that healthcare facilities can hardly manage their own patient’s information, let alone coordinate that information across the greater healthcare universe. And without a centralized, well-functioning system in place, simply identifying patients more easily, as VeriChip allows, doesn’t really add much value. So then the question becomes: if the VeriChip technology ultimately does not significantly enhance healthcare provisioning, is it really worth employing, given its potential for abuse?
Read the article at Electronic Business
