Alzheimers and RFID: Safety First or Privacy Violation?
In the state where Terry Schiavo was eventually allowed to die, privacy is being challenged again. Alzheimer’s Community Cares, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, has agreed to test the use of an electronic tag inserted under a patients skin to see if it will improve medical care. Protocols for the pilot program, the first of its kind in the United States, are still being developed, said Mary Barnes, CEO at ACC.
The technology, called Radio Frequency Identification Devices, is not new. RFIDs have been used as tracking and security devices for years. They’re the tags used on retail items like clothing and over-the-counter medications that make security alarms beep when people walk out the door with them. However, they’ve never been used in this way in humans.
So why now?
“Alzheimer’s is doing to privacy, what 9/11 did to civil liberties,” according to Barnes. “I don’t want to see images in Florida like I saw at the Super Dome.” She stresses that this is a story about safety. “The people laying dead on the stairwells were probably unable to communicate because of Alzheimer’s or a similar mental disorder,” said Barnes.
VeriChip, the manufacturer of the VeriMed chip, traces its own roots to disaster. After 9/11, when the World Trade Center lay smoldering in a pile of rubble, rescue workers scrawled ID numbers across themselves for fear they would go missing in the fray. According to VeriChip, “it was evident there was a desperate need for personal information in emergency situations.” A short-time later VeriChip was founded and the idea to use RFIDs in humans was hatched.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the use of VeriMed in December 2004. Today, over 600 hospitals across the U.S. have the equipment to use VeriMed, supplied to them at little or no cost by VeriChip. In February 2007, VeriChip also went public. The stock rose from a low of $4.27 to a high of over $9.00 in less than six months.
A singer and volunteer at ACC, Richard Ribner thinks the chips could be a great help to patients. “Anything you can do to help these guys would be great,” said Ribner. “They can’t remember much.” Ribner moved to Florida after working in New York City his whole life. He sounds like Tony Soprano, “I ran a biz-ness,” he said. Ribner, who’s been using a computer to sing Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra tunes at ACC, said he doesn’t fear technology. “If it’s 80 percent helpful and only 20 percent a risk, why not?”
It’s an opportune time for VeriChip to push VeriMed. Health care costs continue to climb at twice the rate of inflation and policy experts are recommending technology be integrated into health care. They believe technology has the potential to cut costs and medical errors by as much as 20 percent. President Bush seems to agree, having signed an Executive Order last year designed to get health care providers to use Electronic Health Records by 2012. However, there are still no privacy guidelines to steer the creation of EHRs.
A letter sent by the General Accounting Office to Mike Levitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, highlights the problem. Levitt was reprimanded for allowing technology companies to enter the market without privacy guidelines in place (there are about 20 technology companies selling the hardware and software for EHRs - including Microsoft). The Health Insurance Privacy Protection Act (HIPPA), passed in 1996, does not cover internet and electronic technologies, an integral part of EHR’s.
Paul Tagliaferri, another Florida retiree, said he’s concerned the wrong people will get access to private medical information. “Who’s to say how private medical information could be used to discriminate,” said Tagliaferri. Tagliaferri worked as a comptroller in Philadelphia until retirement. He’s unsure how the chips will ultimately be used, especially by the government. “Can you imagine the day the government requires Medicaid or Medicare enrollees to get implanted with a chip? It won’t be mandatory, but I can hear it,” said Tagliaferri, in a sardonic-troubling way, “No chip, no caid.”
Surprisingly, the one group consistently opposed to RFIDs is End-Timers: people who believe future events will unfold as described in the Bible. Most conservative Christians think the devices are the “the Mark of the Beast.” According to the Bible, it’s is a sign the world is coming to an end.
Ironically, it was pressure from conservative Christians that lead key Republicans to pass a law blocking Terry Schiavo’s husband from removing her feeding tube. Lawmakers were criticized at the time by members of both parties for meddling in the affairs of a private citizen. If the VeriMed pilot program proves a success, politicians may again feel the heat from Florida, caught between the need for personal privacy, and the President’s goals for EHRs.
John Mikytuck is a Scribemedia health reporter. He currently hosts Reporting AIDS, the only WebTV show devoted exclusively to covering the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
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