In order to implement many of the initiatives in the health care reform bill,  such as electronic medical records with standard formats and transferability of insurance with job change,   everyone in the system will need a unique medical ID number,    This number cannot be the social security number for a wide range of reasons, including it being illegal.    What would be ideal would be a number that is intimately tied to you such that if you are incapacitated or have no ID, your medical records still would be easily obtainable.

There are numerous “biometric” technologies that enable you to obtain a unique characterization of you as an individual – fingerprints and retinal scans being two of the best known.    both would be effective in generating a unique numeric code that could be your patient ID number.   this approach is attractive in that you would never have to remember it – when you go to a doctor,  an inexpensive scanner could simply read the number straight from your eye or finger.    Of course, in worse-case scenarios,  appendages or organs may be unavailable for biometric identification.  ( put as delicately as possible )

the ultimate solution is a rapid DNA/RNA based marker system that can use any cell of the body, including hair, urine, saliva etc.  to identify you.   this is much less complex than doing a complete DNA sequencing operation – not more than 40 markers are needed to distinguish 1 trillion different genomes.      Parts of the mitochondrial DNA are known to be highly variable from generation to generation and make a perfect target for a DNA marker based ID approach.

The opportunity is to develop a very rapid and inexpensive method of testing for these markers and converting into a easily manipulated number that would tie you uniquely to your medical records.

For more information contact steven <dot> warwick <at> innovationscommercialization <dot> com