The public is not likely to adopt the use of human implantable chips, says John Halamka, MD, CIO at Harvard Medical School and CareGroup in Massachusetts, who still has one implanted in his arm.
Halamka had the RFID chip implanted in 2004. It was designed to provide his identification and immediate access to his medical history in the event of an emergency. Halamka said the purpose of the implantation was to “evaluate the medical, privacy, social and technological implications” of the technology.
Although Halamka says the technology works fine, he says it is not very practical – just having it implanted requires a minor surgical procedure.
“It’s easy to insert but challenging to remove. I have no plan to have mine removed,” he said.
Jim Keller, vice president of health technology evaluation and safety at the ECRI Institute, based in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., believes the “invasiveness of the chip and the permanency of it” is the main reason people have concerns about the technology.
“Today, patient controlled health records and personal health records offer a credible alternative to implanted chips,” Halamka says.
Halamka’s assertion that implantable RFID chips will never be widely accepted by the public has been reflected in Delray Beach, Fla.-based VeriChip’s success – or lack thereof – in gaining traction with the implantable chip.
Last year, VeriChip sold Xmark, its main operating subsidiary, to New Britain, Conn.-based-The Stanley Works. Allison Tomek, vice president of investor relations and corporate communications, said after the sale, their former majority stockholder, Digital Angel Corp., decided to put the VeriMed Health Link business, which uses human-implantable passive RFID microchips to identify people, “on hold.”
Tomek said that in November 2008, Scott R. Silverman, the company’s chairman and former CEO, purchased Digital Angel’s 5.4 million shares of VeriChip, which has caused marketing efforts related to its VeriMed Health Link system “to be limited to a few key relationships as the board of directors continues to determine the future direction of the company.”
Tomek says the company is focused on its patient program with Alzheimer’s community care, which provides a safety net for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers. “We believe our implantable microchip for patient identification is very important for those with cognitive impairment, as well as other high-risk patients,” she says.
VeriChip formed a partnership with RECEPTORS LLC, a company based in Chaska, Minn. to develop an implantable bio-sensor chip that could measure glucose levels and relay that information to a monitor. In May VeriChip expanded its existing development partnership with Receptors to include other biological and environmental applications.
“Looking beyond patient identification to the future of implantable microchip technology, we believe our relationship with RECEPTORS LLC holds great promise,” Tomek says.
Keller believes the next phase for RFID technology will be imbedding them into patient ID tags. Many ID tags already have barcoding associated with them, he says, but “we are just starting to hear about them being used as a replacement or in conjunction with barcoding.”
“RFID is a rapidly moving technology that is still working on getting its foothold,” said Keller.
