Implanted Chips Provide Access to Medical History

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Today's personal health news includes a question about a tiny glass capsule the size of a grain of rice. Millions of dogs and cats have them under their skin for identification, and now a Florida company is marketing these identity chips for human use. The question is whether you should get one. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.

JOANNE SILBERNER reporting:

Emergency room physician John Halamka(ph) sees the benefit of being able to find out who a person is quickly.

Dr. JOHN HALAMKA (Emergency Room Physician): One or two times a day, I will deal with a patient who I can't identify because they're either confused or in some way they're unresponsive.

SILBERNER: And he'd like their medical history because certain things he needs to do immediately could be dangerous, like give an aspirin to someone with a heart attack to break up blood clots. He's dealt with people he didn't know were allergic to aspirin.

Dr. HALAMKA: They develop airway complications and swelling because their tongue swells, they can't breathe. You have to now put them on a ventilator.

SILBERNER: Halamka is two other things besides an ER doc. He's the CIO, the chief information officer, for Harvard Medical School, and he's a climber, rocks or ice. He can see the possibility of showing up in someone else's ER unable to speak. So when Halamka heard about the VeriChip, a new implantable chip, he figured he'd do a personal test; he'd get one. The chip doesn't contain his medical history. It just carries a 16-digit code that can be used to access medical information at a secure location on the Web.

Dr. HALAMKA: For me, it has been a worry-free painless experience that has demonstrated that there is application to the technology.

SILBERNER: Halamka says he's neither an advocate nor a critic.

Dr. HALAMKA: It's just a more reliable way of insuring medical history follows you.

SILBERNER: Right now it can't follow you very far. Only five hospitals have the special scanners needed to read the 16-digit code. Still, Halamka went for it. He had a $200 chip implanted in the back of his right upper arm under local anaesthesia. People with chips can decide who can access the information, either doctors or law enforcement personnel or both. Besides medical records, you can store other information like a living will and the names of emergency contacts. Molly Minacucci Phillips(ph) has had diabetes for 25 years. She's had a VeriChip for a few months.

Mr. MOLLY MINACUCCI PHILLIPS (Diabetes Patient): Last winter, I was severely sick and had to be put into the ER, and I had no idea what medications I take on a daily basis, what the dosage was, and if I had the chip in my arm, they would have been able to pull it up within a matter of minutes.

SILBERNER: She had to call her brother, who went over to her house to check her medicine cabinet. Phillips whose father is a consultant to the company says her new VeriChip is wonderful.

Ms. PHILLIPS: I have no idea that it's even in my arm. If they looked at my arm, they wouldn't even know it was there. I'd have to tell them, which I tell people all the time, and they think it's fascinating. They try to feel for it and they can't even feel it.

SILBERNER: The Food and Drug Administration approved the device last October. So far, only about 50 Americans have had the chip implanted. Phillips is one of the few people who could get any benefit from a chip right now. She lives in New Jersey near one of the few hospitals in the country with a scanner. Other hospitals can't scan her ID number and can't get her medical information. And some privacy advocates, like Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of Privacy Journal, are concerned. He's worried that people will be able to hack into the Web site and get people's medical information. And he says...

Mr. ROBERT ELLIS SMITH (Privacy Journal): It's just a very dangerous precedent, to get people used to this idea of carrying their identity underneath their skin and having an electronic capability to identify them and to locate them and to provide information about them.

SILBERNER: The head of VeriChip, Scott Silverman, says the manufacturer is marketing the device for medical purposes only. But in other countries, it's been used for identification for entry into secure areas, and in Rotterdam, as a way to run a tab at a local pub.

Joanne Silberner, NPR News.

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