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October 2007 • Volume 12 Number 10
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Member Profile: SMART Association
SMART Association has grown to become the nationwide healthcare industry leader in HIPAA compliant, permission-based membership marketing strategies for the past 17 years. Mr. Batchelor received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and majored in marketing from San Francisco State University. 1. What are SMART Association's main business profile and offerings? SMART Association, Inc. was founded over 16-years ago and is a membership marketing organization that designs, creates and manages membership loyalty programs for its 200-plus clients across the nation. Our core business is based on creating and maintaining a loyalty bond between patient and hospital through the offerings of value-added memberships, discounts and merchant loyalty programs. SMART’s Client Relationship Management (CRM) tool, known as SmartTrack™ allows us to further maintain the unique relationships between hospitals and patients by allowing real-time access to membership data, queries and reports and broadens the reach beyond the hospital doors and reaches far into the communities we serve. SMART offers over 65,000 national merchants, who work with SMART and allow us to provide discounts to vendor program and services.
LifeMed™ is a smart card-based patient information and admission data system that combines a real-time web interface with the portability and security of off-line systems. The program components work together to save time and redundancy for the patient, reduce costly errors for the hospital or physician, and enhance the overall patient experience. Patient data includes basic demographics, insurance and emergency information, allergies, medical conditions, and recent prescriptions. Information is uploaded by patients through the hospital’s web site and is securely encrypted onto a smart card. When patients visit the hospital, they present the smart card. The smart card information, which can be updated, is then accessed by a hospital’s admissions unit and matched to the hospital’s data management software. Kiosks at the hospital also allow patients to pre-register using data stored on the smart card to populate standardized patient forms. Additionally, ambulances and EMTs will have portable card readers that can view the patient’s smart card data in emergency situations, providing immediate and accurate information. 2. How did SMART Association migrate into smart card technology? Over the last sixteen years, SMART has issued over 3,000,000 membership cards and we continue to issue thousands of membership cards per week. We built upon our understanding of the CRM model and added value to the card so that the patient would make the connection between consumer usage and healthcare management. That model is unique to us, and one we think is a true market differentiator. With the convergence of affordable cards & readers, coupled with the general acceptance of smart cards as a mainstream technology, we saw a clear evolutionary path. 3. What role does smart card technology play in supporting SMART Association's business? In developing the LifeMed™ platform, we wanted to use smart cards to solve ever-increasing issues that our hospital clients experience on a daily basis. The three primary hospital-patient problems are: 1) correctly identifying the patient; 2) matching the patient to their unique and individual medical record; and 3) efficiently managing the admissions process. The LifeMed™ product was designed to address those three problems by using smart card technology, in conjunction with online integration. 4. What trends do you see developing in the market that SMART Association hopes to capitalize on? With some of the recent successful trials going on with the healthcare market, the overall cognizance of smart cards is much higher than it ever has been. Almost every healthcare provider has heard of smart cards and the response has been favorable. Healthcare organizations are aware of the new technologies being presented and are interested in starting a dialogue, including those from an ROI perspective. With some of the recently published analyses of the numbers, the results heavily favor smart card technology as a way to improve a hospital’s bottom line. 5. What obstacles to growth do you see that must be overcome to capitalize on these opportunities? Several. First and foremost, product design, implementation and deployment are crucial. The research and development of the smart card product took five years. We spent countless hours on focus groups with hospitals and patients looking for the exact combination that would be appealing and valuable to both the hospital and patient. We believe that the product has to solve an expensive problem: ensuring correct patient data and information. There must be a deep understanding of each client and the end goals to be accomplished. Within healthcare, the focus must be on the patient and delivering value so that the patient’s life and lifestyle are improved. Smart card technology, or any technology for that matter, is simply a means to the end. We believe that smart cards should be positioned to leverage their strengths of security and portability, but not try to become complete EMRs. The industry needs to look at smart cards as mini-repositories that can securely transport data and authenticate patients. Those are real issues that can be solved today with the existing means at our disposal. Smart cards can and should be a natural and necessary evolutionary step towards a real community-wide EMR. The last big issue that needs to be sorted out is standardization. As an industry, we are very strong on the physical standards -- card size, chip placement, flexibility, data transmission protocols. But we have essentially no standards on the data side. That is due in part to the enormous numbers of players within the system, all of whom have their own proprietary forms and needs. The GSA did an exceptional job a few years ago by forcing standards for all vendors. This approach certainly worked when there was a single issuer, the government. But in the healthcare universe, there are just too many moving parts. It seems to us that the first agreement must be on interoperability for the physical components and indigenous card operating system. Then after that, we need to agree upon minimum data access and sharing protocols. Finally, we can get to the point where we can talk about data standardization and presentation. But that is still quite a ways off. 6. What do you see are the key factors driving smart card technology in the market? Education: on the part of our client hospitals, and on the part of the patient-users. For the hospitals, we need to show that there is a bona fide business case for smart card technology. This has been proven based on savings from insurance and billing errors, savings on redundant tests, patient verification savings, and time savings throughout the entire care process. For the patient, we must focus on the idea that carrying a smart card is a time-saving, and potentially life-saving action, particularly when we are talking about emergency situations. Patients understand that carrying smart cards with emergency medical information that can be accessed (even when a patient cannot communicate) has real value. 7. How do you see your involvement in the Alliance and the Healthcare Council helping SMART Association? We want to help shape the market perception of smart cards and influence the path that we see as being critical for the long-term viability of the industry. The healthcare vertical is of such magnitude, that we genuinely want to share our thoughts and strategies so that the overall market grows. At this point in the market’s nascence, anyone’s victory is everyone’s victory. And if our input helps to educate and induce business for us or anyone else, then we have done a great service.
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This month, Smart Card Talk spoke with David Batchelor, President of SMART Association. Mr. Batchelor oversees the company from an executive level and oversees sales and new business development. Over the last 21 years, Mr. Batchelor has applied his education and experience in marketing, business development and consulting to the development, implementation and delivery of unique consumer relationship marketing programs in banks, credit unions and healthcare providers. 
As the largest membership management organization in the healthcare marketing arena, SMART is now moving into smart card technology, with our recent release of our LifeMed™ product. 
