Health Care CIO Runs 'Internal' RFID Test

By Heather Havenstein

February 21, 2005 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - John Halamka, CIO at both CareGroup Inc. and Harvard Medical School, is testing radio frequency identification technology -- on himself.
An RFID chip that is the size of two grains of rice and encased in a glass container was implanted in the back of Halamka's right arm, near the elbow, just before Christmas. Halamka said this month that when the chip is scanned by an RFID reader, an identifying number directs physicians to his medical records, which are stored electronically at CareGroup's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The chip was inserted with a needle in a procedure that took about five minutes. Halamka, 42, said he's testing the technology for its potential to help health care workers get critical medical information about unresponsive patients.
For example, Halamka noted that he is an avid mountain and ice climber. "If I fall and I'm not responsive, wouldn't it be extraordinarily helpful for the people who rescue me to know who I am and my medical history?"
Halamka, who has a medical degree and works as an emergency-room doctor at Beth Israel, said he isn't advocating that people get injected with RFID chips. But he added that he decided to try the technology himself partly so he could describe the experience to patients who want to undergo the procedure.


John Halamka, CIO at both CareGroup Inc. and Harvard Medical School

Halamka is confident that the implanted RFID chip, which was designed to last 100 years, doesn't raise data privacy concerns, because it contains no medical records -- only the identifier that points to his records. "There is no way just from reading my tag for a merchant to know who I am," he said.
Halamka's chip was made by VeriChip Corp. in Delray Beach, Fla., and was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medical use in October.
Roger Kay, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., said the needed technology infrastructure -- mainly scanners -- is not installed widely enough to support the use of RFID tags in a large number of patients.
But Kay said the idea is becoming feasible from a cost standpoint. "The cost of the individual chips is coming way down, to the point where it becomes practical to have chips on individual items, including people," he said.

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