How a Biometric Smart Card Can Limit Prescription Fraud
Welcome to our second post on biometrics in healthcare. In this post, David Orme, SVP of Sales and Marketing at IDEX Biometrics discusses how a biometric smart card can limit prescription fraud. Our previous post in our series on healthcare looked at why biometric access control systems are a must for the healthcare industry.
Using a biometric smart card to create a secure and portable means of identifying people through the use of unique biometric data is an excellent fraud prevention tactic. Fingerprints are used as one of the most common types of biometric data, and the combination of biometric data with smart cards delivers a robust technology to reduce fraud in the healthcare sector.
Unique Identifiers
Biometric data contains unique identifiers for the individual providing the data. These identifiers are extremely difficult to duplicate or fake, which makes them a logical choice for use in the healthcare sector. This data is unique to each individual, providing a secure means of identifying an individual requesting services and ensuring that a service or medication is not delivered to the incorrect person.
Portability with Security
Requiring the use of a biometric smart card provides prescribers and pharmacies with peace of mind when dispensing prescriptions. The presentation of a smart card ensures that the patient has a secure and portable way to verify their identity and provides the pharmacy and prescriber with assurances that the person who should receive the prescription is doing so.
This plays a valuable role on the provider’s end, too. Associating their prescribing practices with their own unique set of biometric data ensures that prescriptions cannot be fraudulently created from their practice, making this a secure means of prescribing and dispensing medication and a secure means of entering the information into the appropriate healthcare record with their biometric signature.
Fraud Reduction
Biometric authentication technology via a smart card allows for portability and helps reduce fraud in a variety of ways. This runs from the provider side, by reducing the risk of erroneously issued prescriptions, to the patient side, where the patient’s own unique identifiers are required to verify and receive the prescription.
With prescription fraud in the UK costing an estimated £25,000,000 annually, addressing this issue is essential, and biometric smart cards are here to meet the need for improved security surrounding prescribing practices. With patients embracing the technology and providers using it to safely and securely communicate prescribing information, the biometric smart card approach offers additional layers of security and extra data points where information must be verified.
The future of prescribing and prescription security lies in biometric authentication. The implementation of this technology will reduce prescription fraud dramatically and allow for proper prescribing and identification procedures, all while improving patient security through unique identity verification. Money previously spent fighting fraudulent activities in healthcare can instead be used to improve patient care.
Our previous post in our series on healthcare looked at why biometric access control systems are a must for the healthcare industry.
