Thursday, March 15, 2012

Colorado to Discuss Biometrics Requirement for Prescription Drugs

HB12-1242 is under consideration by the Colorado General Assembly (Security Management)
Before prescribing or dispensing medication, medical providers would be required gather to information including the prescribing doctor’s name, office address, medication instructions, and the name and address of the patient, in addition to their biometric identifier -- a fingerprint or retinal scan. In other industries, facial and vein recognition [5] have also been used for verification.

The patient’s data would be converted into a unique identifier and sent (encrypted) to the pharmacy. Only the receiving pharmacy could decrypt the information. That’s how it should work. But privacy advocates say gathering so much data would provide dangerously detailed information about patients if hackers decided to target the database.
I sincerely doubt retina scans will be involved. If the eye is deemed necessary, iris would seem to make more sense.