Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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2 Your Health: Palm Scanning Technology at Roper St. Francis
By Carolyn Murray
WCBD- TV News 2
CHARLESTON, SC -- Roper St. Francis is the first health system in the Lowcountry to use PatientSecure®, a new palm vein biometric technology. Tyler Handy, the patient intake supervisor says it ensures the correct health record is used for every patient, during each visit.
"Our palm scanners are the new patient identification system we are using throughout all of Roper St Francis health care system to make sure that we identify them each time they come in for a visit", Handy says.
The PatientSecure® system uses harmless, near-infrared light to illuminate the vein patterns in hands. The data from the vein patterns is stored for reference and used during future RSF visits, which allows quick and accurate patient identification.
It's not uncommon for a health care system like RSF to have multiple patients with the same name, and maybe even the same middle initial and birth date. If a patient comes into RSF and is unresponsive the new palm scanning technology can speak for the patient.
"In an emergency situation where you are unresponsive and couldn't present that information if you are enrolled in this system we can access your medical records by just using that palm print", Handy says.
The new palm scanning technology helps eliminate risk, and most importantly it improves accuracy of patient identification.
As an added bonus, PatientSecure® technology gives patients' protection against medical identity theft and insurance card sharing. It accelerates registration, decreases patient wait time, and puts a stop to duplicate medical records and overlays.