	About Smart Cards : Applications : Healthcare

Healthcare Applications

Health care organizations worldwide are implementing smart health cards supporting a wide variety of features and applications. Smart health cards can improve the security and privacy of patient information, provide the secure carrier for portable medical records, reduce healthcare fraud, support new processes for portable medical records, provide secure access to emergency medical information, enable compliance with government initiatives and mandates, and provide the platform to implement other applications as needed by the healthcare organization.

Smart Card Alliance Healthcare Reports

A Healthcare CFO’s Guide to Smart Card Technology and Applications. Developed for healthcare CFOs, this white paper outlines the key benefits and business case for using smart cards for healthcare applications. The white paper identifies some of the major challenges faced by healthcare CFOs and discusses how smart card technology can provide innovative, practical and cost-effective solutions.
Effective Healthcare Identity Management: A Necessary First Step for Improving U.S. Healthcare Information Systems – A Smart Card Alliance Brief for Government Policy Makers and Other Stakeholders. Government policy makers are looking carefully at the best ways to improve the efficiency of information systems in the healthcare industry. Much emphasis has been placed on the need for electronic health records for every American, and at ways to exchange those records at the regional, state and national levels. But this is putting the cart before the horse. Such an effort must start with the accurate identification of each person receiving healthcare services or participating in healthcare benefit programs. Next, there must be a way to uniquely and securely authenticate that person across the healthcare system, including over the Internet, in a secure and privacy sensitive way. This brief was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Healthcare and Identity Councils to introduce the current problems with healthcare identity management, security and privacy, and propose leveraging existing federal standards and technologies already used in other government identity programs.
HIPAA Compliance and Smart Cards: Solutions to Privacy and Security Requirements. This report describes how smart cards can be used to meet HIPAA Security Rule and Privacy Rule requirements.
Smart Card Alliance Healthcare Council
Smart Card Applications in the U.S. Healthcare Industry. This report describes the value that smart cards deliver in a variety of U.S. healthcare applications. The report reviews key challenges that the U.S. healthcare provider industry faces and examines the key drivers for implementing smart card-based systems to address these challenges.
Smart Card Technology in Healthcare: Frequently Asked Questions. Smart cards are used worldwide to improve security and privacy of payment and identity applications. The Smart Card Alliance Healthcare Council developed this document to answer questions about how smart cards work and how the technology is used to manage patient identity and protect a healthcare consumer’s personal information.
Smart Cards in U.S. Healthcare: Benefits for Patients, Providers and Payers. The paper describes the challenges within the healthcare industry and the clear opportunities for the use of smart card technology for security and privacy in healthcare. The paper examines smart card use in healthcare today and suggests additional applications for consideration.

Smart Health Card Implementations

The following profiles and resources showcase how organizations can successfully use smart cards for a wide variety of healthcare applications.

U.S. Projects and Implementations

International Implementations

The Smart Card Alliance Healthcare Council offers additional resources for organizations implementing smart cards in healthcare applications.