Fingerprint pot-dispensing machines big news in Massachusetts

A secure stop for pot? (MetroWest Daily News)

After voters this month legalized medical marijuana, an Arizona businessman is opening an office in Natick, hoping his biometric dispensing system becomes the standard used in Bay State dispensaries.

Bruce Bedrick, CEO of consulting firm Kind Clinics LLC and manufacturer Medbox Inc., said it prevents people from obtaining marijuana fraudulently.

Medbox was also in the news lately when investors looking to cash in on medical marijuana referendums in the United States drove Medbox shares from $3.14 per share before the election to $215.00 per share on November 15.

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Biometrics for Patient ID Program Aims to Curb Prescription Drug Abuse

Gallia first to enroll in Rx pilot program (Daily Tribune - Gallipolis, OH)

The program, being launched through a public-private partnership between regional health care provider Holzer Health System and CrossChx, a company based in Gallipolis, is known as the Biometric Enrollment and Verification Prescription System and will allow doctors to compare health records from multiple sources to help determine the eligibility of a patient to receive a prescription for medication.

CrossChx (pronounced “cross checks”) will provide the technology to track health information and will, specifically, use biometrics, or the identification of an individual through his or her inherit traits — in this case, fingerprints — to allow prescribers to receive real-time patient information.

The article goes on to note that, locally, 30% of the infants in the neo-natal intensive care unit are addicted to opiates.

Biometrics For Safer and More Accurate Clinical Trials

clinicalRSVP Presents Dual Enrollment Prevention Observances at ACPU Meeting (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News)

clinicalRSVP (Clinical Research Subject Verification Program), an online participant registry that prevents clinical trial volunteers from being enrolled in more than one trial at a time, recently contributed key insight on subject registries in a featured session at the 21st Annual Association of Clinical Pharmacology Units (ACPU) Meeting held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. The session focused on the impact of subject registries and their capacity to reduce business and safety risks posed by dual enrollment.
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Smith added that for a registry to be truly effective, biometric identification is necessary for complete accuracy and participant privacy. clinicalRSVP is the only registry in the industry that provides biometric technology to validate participant eligibility.

“We chose a biometric system over a non-biometric system to minimize the required demographic information needed to identify subjects allowing us to maximize subject privacy and confidentiality,” Smith stated.

Notice how, in the last sentence, biometrics are used to enhance privacy, rather than to erode it.

Mystery Patients Continue to Point at Biometric Patient Identification Systems as Solution

Thoughts on biometric patient identification systems at the M2SYS blog

...[A] badly battered, dazed and confused man picked up by the police and transported to Grady Memorial Hospital without any identification on him or means to identify himself other than giving his name. Subsequently, Grady published his photo asking the public for their help to identify the patient, hoping someone may recognize him.

More at the link.

See also: Biometrics for people who can't identify themselves

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.