Health Link is a microchip implanted under the skin that, when scanned, provides access to a patient’s online medical records. The chip is linked to Microsoft (MSFT)’s HealthVault and Google (GOOG) Health.
The company’s press release is slim on details, but it suggests that either ship workers’ employers or the employees themselves will be charged a monthly fee to keep the chip activated in the system. In effect, PositiveID will hold the implanted workers’ online health records to ransom: One assumes that if the monthly fee is not paid, access will not be granted. (Why else would anyone feel obligated to pay?) The company said:
Upon successful completion and review of the pilot program, PositiveID will offer its Health Link PHR to millions of seafarers and port workers per year, on a paid subscription basis.
Shipworkers are being targeted because they frequently travel far from their regular doctors:
When sailors become ill, they will visit a doctor at their next port of call. The doctor, typically, does not have access to the sailors’ [pre-employment medical examinations], nor does the doctor know the patient’s medical history, and will therefore conduct a thorough, costly examination prior to prescribing treatment. This expensive and burdensome repetition of medical procedures can be eliminated by using Health Link, which stores the sailors initial PEME and subsequent medical procedures.
You can easily imagine how some companies, eager to save money on healthcare, will insist on chips for all their employees." ...more
