Records on smartcards [was: [LINK] Thoughts about health cards]

[Malcolm Miles]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 13:09:54 +1100 (EST), you wrote:

>If records were primarily held on a personal card, there are several 
>important problems: 
>
>- if the card is unavailable then treatment can be compromised (especially 
>in medical emergencies) 

No better or worse than the current situation where in most emergency
cases a patients records aren't available to the ambulance or
emergency ward doctors.

>- a lot of medical work (and information flows) goes on away from the 
>patient and therefore their smartcard, e.g. after they've left the clinic, 
>or when more that one medico needs to access patient information at the 
>same time, like different hospital departments 
>- smartcards cannot cope with the megabytes, sometimes gigabytes of data 
>(note that many hospital imaging systems are going digital; as an aside, 
>my most recent medical images were given to me on a CD-ROM) 

I would not expect that a smart card would store x-ray images and
other full test results. It should be able to store basic medical
data, such as any conditions such as diabetes, current drug regime,
their GP's details etc; much like an expanded version of the medical
bracelets some people wear.

-- 
Best wishes,
Malcolm