Dolan Media Newswire Story
Subject: Baltimore-based nonprofit partners in bringing microchips mainstream
Pub: Daily Record, The (Baltimore, MD)
Author: Karen Buckelew
Category: Health Services,Charities/Non-Profits
Sub-Category: Medical Research
Issue Date: 08/29/2007 Word Count: 45
Baltimore-based nonprofit partners in bringing microchips mainstream
by Karen Buckelew
Dolan Media Newswires
© Dolan Media Newswires 2009.BALTIMORE, MD -- Implanting human beings with microchips that contain their identification and medical records is a controversial subject.
But by the end of the year, as many as 500 kidney dialysis patients in Maryland will be equipped with microchips from Florida firm VeriChip Corp., and local hospitals will be carrying the technology to read the chips.
The project is a partnership between VeriChip and the Independent Dialysis Foundation Inc., a Baltimore-based nonprofit that operates eight dialysis centers in the state.
VeriChip has offered to implant its VeriMed microchip, the size of a grain of rice, at no cost in all the foundation's roughly 500 patients. The company also hopes to provide the readers at no cost to about 25 hospital emergency departments in the state.
In return, VeriChip — traded on the Nasdaq as CHIP — will collect effectiveness data on its product to present to insurers and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to try to convince them to cover the cost of the device.
VeriMed received Food and Drug Administration approval in 2004, but no third-party payors cover it, said VeriChip President William Caragol. Generally, the product is offered free with a $9.95 monthly subscription rate to follow.
"What is of high interest to insurance companies is the ability to provide better care at better costs," Caragol said. "That entails less tests, less unnecessary drugs or procedures. You start out, as opposed to a blank slate, [with information including] who this is, what's been wrong with them."
The chips, injected into the triceps, do not contain any information except a 16-digit number corresponding with records stored on the VeriMed registry, a Web-based database.
Patients enter their own information — similar to the medical history questionnaires patients fill out before seeing a new physician — and update it.
About 350 patients have the chip, more than 10 percent of them part of studies on Alzheimer's, dementia and dialysis patients.
About 180 American hospitals have the readers, and about 650 more have expressed interest, Caragol said.
The firm hopes to have six studies off the ground this year, with final results due two years after that.
The Independent Dialysis Foundation's patients are more likely to visit ERs, as they are older and chronically ill, often diabetic, said Dr. John Sadler, the foundation's founder and CEO.
Doctors in the ER "often don't know what's wrong with the patient, and the patient isn't able to tell them," Sadler said, adding that elderly patients are more likely to arrive at hospitals disoriented and uncommunicative.
The device could save time, said Dr. Brian Browne, chief of the emergency department at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
"I think it's a pretty novel idea," said Browne, who has signed on his emergency room to be a part of the VeriChip study. Browne's hospital supplies medical directors at the foundation's centers, and the foundation operates the hospital's dialysis center.
Sadler said he expected about half his patients to sign on to the study.
Some patients may have privacy concerns, Browne noted.
"It's not for everyone," he said. "I think patients with specific medical problems are going to find it very comforting to know that their medical record is easily accessed."
VeriChip also produces a hospital security technology that equips patients — including dementia sufferers and infants — with bracelets that send out radio signals allowing a hospital to track their movements.
Opponents have noted the possibility of abuse of the ability to track people and their movements.
But VeriMed is a passive chip, Caragol said, meaning it sends out no radio signal and can be read only from two inches away.
The older, chronically ill patients VeriChip has targeted seem glad for a chance to make hospital stays more pleasant, said Caragol.
Younger people say, "'This is Big Brother, Big Brother's going to track me,'" Caragol said. "We welcome that question. Once you understand, it's clear that can never be. Not with a product like this."
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