Computer chip gives doctors information during emergencies
10:25 p.m. Friday, July 21, 2006
Joe Mulligan lives with a bad heart and diabetes.
Mulligan said he hopes a tiny computer chip will protect him in a health crisis.
“God forbid if I’m ever unconscious and have to come to the emergency ward. I won’t have any problems telling them exactly what I have,” Mulligan said.
That’s because in emergencies, Mulligans Verichip speaks for him.
Doctors inject the chip under the skin in back of the arm. Each implant has a unique 16-digit ID number that doctors retrieve with a radio-frequency scanner.
“It’s kind of like an insurance policy,” John Phillips, patient, said. “You know it’s there, and hopefully you never have to us it.”
When police Sergeant William Koretsky was hurt on the job, he became the first patient to ever test the chip. With a pass of a scanner over his implant, Koretsky’s medical history and contact information pop up on a computer screen.
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The Verichip is FDA approved. Insurance does not cover it yet, but the manufacturer is working on the problem. The chip itself costs about $200, and procedure costs vary among doctors.
“You could literally go from scanning someone to getting the information within a minute. Where the same type of information can take hours, sometimes,” Dr. Joseph Feldman, Hackensack University Medical Center, said.
Time is precious in an emergency.
Dr. Feldman pioneered the technology in humans. Dr. Feldman said the Verichip is just the beginning.
“Potentially, when you scan an animal soon in Europe, you’ll get a unique identifying number, their core body temperature and their blood glucose level. You can imagine where I’m leading now,” Dr. Feldman said.
Welcome to the future.
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