Identity in the Palm of Your Hand (Photo from the article quoted)
Hospital scans palms to track patients | SmartPlanet.
Quote from the article: “A New York City hospital is using patients’ palms, not insurance cards, to pull records, according to a new report.
“The New York University Langone Medical Center started scanning palms last month to reduce paperwork and prevent identity theft, the New York Daily News reports, using a device that images the veins in a patient’s hand.”
This is an interesting new approach. People hate to give their fingerprints since they tend to be connected to crime and police.
As we do not all have electronic identification available (like the SuisseID we are beginning to use in Switzerland) easy to use biometrics are still a powerful identification method. Especially in hospitals where identity fraud seems to be quite common to receive treatment on someone else’s insurance.
US Homeland Security used a similar method where they evaluated the shape of the hand. The method of identification was available to frequent travelers some years ago but has since been replaced.
Image via Wikipedia
Do you know of other easy-to-use identification methods that can be widely used?
Related articles
- Hospital scans palms to track patients (SmartPlanet)
- Friday Poll: Are you ready for hospital palm scans? (news.cnet.com)
- Patients Check In At NYU Hospital With Hand Scan (newyork.cbslocal.com)
- Hospital Scans Palms to Speed Up Paperwork (healthland.time.com)
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HellmuthBroda.com (Pondering Technology) 
Other indentification method are the eyes. You have at certain airports (schiphol) custom identification systems, scanning the eyes…
Thanks, yes I had heard about it — but I find it a little cumbersome for people wearing glasses like I do.
you just take your glasses of…
Had not thought about that 😉