The Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for a Florida company to market implantable chips that would provide easy access to individual medical records.
The approval, which the company announced yesterday, is expected to bring to public attention a simmering debate over a technology that has evoked Orwellian overtones for privacy advocates and fueled fears of widespread tracking of people with implanted radio frequency tags, even though that ability does not yet exist.
Applied Digital Solutions based in Delray Beach, Fla., said that its devices, which it calls VeriChips, could save lives and limit injuries from errors in medical treatment. And it expressed hope that such medical uses would accelerate the acceptance of under-the-skin ID chips as security and access-control devices.
Scott R. Silverman, chairman and chief executive of Applied Digital, said the F.D.A.'s approval should help the company overcome "the creepy factor" of implanted tags and the suspicion it has stirred.
"We believe there are far fewer people resisting this today," Mr. Silverman said. But it is far from clear whether implanted identification tags can overcome opposition from those who fear new levels of personal surveillance and from some fundamentalist religious groups who contend that the tags may be the "mark of the beast" referred to in the Book of Revelation.
In Applied Digital's vision, patients implanted with the chips could receive more effective care because doctors, other emergency-room personnel and ambulance crews equipped with Applied's handheld radio scanners would be able to read a unique 16-digit number on the chip.
The chip does not contain any records, but with the number, the care provider would be able to retrieve medical information about blood type, drug histories and other critical data stored in computers. The records could be easily updated.
Tiny radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags similar to VeriChip have been embedded in livestock and pets in the millions in recent years as a more secure form of identification than external tags. But no device maker has yet been able to create a market for human implantable tags like VeriChip, which are the size of a grain of rice and are inserted under the skin of the arm or hand with a syringe. More
The approval, which the company announced yesterday, is expected to bring to public attention a simmering debate over a technology that has evoked Orwellian overtones for privacy advocates and fueled fears of widespread tracking of people with implanted radio frequency tags, even though that ability does not yet exist.
Applied Digital Solutions based in Delray Beach, Fla., said that its devices, which it calls VeriChips, could save lives and limit injuries from errors in medical treatment. And it expressed hope that such medical uses would accelerate the acceptance of under-the-skin ID chips as security and access-control devices.
Scott R. Silverman, chairman and chief executive of Applied Digital, said the F.D.A.'s approval should help the company overcome "the creepy factor" of implanted tags and the suspicion it has stirred.
"We believe there are far fewer people resisting this today," Mr. Silverman said. But it is far from clear whether implanted identification tags can overcome opposition from those who fear new levels of personal surveillance and from some fundamentalist religious groups who contend that the tags may be the "mark of the beast" referred to in the Book of Revelation.
In Applied Digital's vision, patients implanted with the chips could receive more effective care because doctors, other emergency-room personnel and ambulance crews equipped with Applied's handheld radio scanners would be able to read a unique 16-digit number on the chip.
The chip does not contain any records, but with the number, the care provider would be able to retrieve medical information about blood type, drug histories and other critical data stored in computers. The records could be easily updated.
Tiny radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags similar to VeriChip have been embedded in livestock and pets in the millions in recent years as a more secure form of identification than external tags. But no device maker has yet been able to create a market for human implantable tags like VeriChip, which are the size of a grain of rice and are inserted under the skin of the arm or hand with a syringe. More
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