What Are Smart Cards?

Smart cards are credit card-sized pieces of plastics that are embedded with computer chips that can securely store information, serve as a source for cashless financial transactions, and provide a myriad of other services. In the most simplistic terms, a Smart card is a portable mini-computer than can be programmed to do almost anything a regular computer can do. In fact, today’s Smart cards have the technical capabilities as a desktop computer that was made in 1996.

How Do Smart Cards Work In Healthcare?

Some of Smart cards greatest successes have been in the healthcare arena. Countries with national healthcare systems such as France and Germany have issued over 150,000,000 Smart cards that carry health and identification data. As in other countries, the importance of Smart cards has proven to be beneficial to the healthcare market for data access, accuracy, and management. Technology adoption within the U.S. healthcare market has certain challenges unknown to other industries (e.g. HIPAA mandates). However, over the years, standards have been established along with best practices to facilitate wide-scale implementation of Smart cards to the benefit of all participants.

Additional Information

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