Lowering cost, creating administrative efficiency, improving patients’ outcomes, fostering the relationship between patients and physicians, the desire to meet the ever increasing demand for privacy, security, as well as identity issues, propel the need to adopt technology in healthcare organizations (Geylani & Turhan, 2006). Using smartcards in a healthcare organization is linked to the need to identify and authenticate patients, correlating patients to their data, harmonizing data from incongruent sources, and enhancing security as well as controlling access to information.
Smartcards are portable and indeed secure if all security measures are considered. They are reliable and offer practical solutions to the problems the sector has been facing in the past years. The advantages associated with adopting smartcard technology in the healthcare setup include the following; reducing cost, improving how patients are identified along with improving workflow, reducing claims denials and increasing revenue generation, offering physicians authenticated and authorized access to healthcare information, aids in ensuring that the federal requirements enshrined in HIPAA are complied with, helps to foster facility and network security as well as offering healthcare professionals immediate access to life-saving information. Additionally, the card helps in improving the satisfaction of both the patient as well as physicians and provides the platform in supporting national healthcare information networks (Geylani & Turhan, 2006).
There are important managerial issues that need to be addressed before adopting smartcard technology in healthcare organizations. This includes carrying out a thorough analysis of the benefits as well as costs of adopting such technology. Similarly, it is encouraged that the relevant stakeholders especially the patients and the physicians be well informed or educated about how to use the cards. One big question regarding smartcard technology is ‘what are the ethical issues that arise when using smartcards and how can they be handled satisfactorily?’
References
Burke, L. & Weill, B. (2009). Information technology for the health professions. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Geylani, K. & Turhan, T. (2006). Design and implementation of a smart card based healthcare information system. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 81(2): 66–78.
Whitten, J. & Bentley, L. (2007). Systems analysis and design methods. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.