Biometric technology has been embraced by numerous industries across the world for ensuring physical and information security. Enabling enhanced security and convenience in physical access control, biometric technology has offered immense benefits to every organization. In the healthcare industry, biometrics plays a critical role in patient identification and validation, and helps towards reducing healthcare frauds. With the increasing use of electronic healthcare records (EHR), large amount of sensitive healthcare information is exchanged between various stakeholders in the healthcare industry. The complexity and volume of such information exchanges has led to increased concerns related to data security and integrity. Lack of accuracy in patients’ healthcare information can lead to catastrophic results such as loss of life, irreparable physical damages and erroneous medication. From the providers’ perspective, such instances can lead to numerous expensive recovery processes and loss of faith among patients. Biometrics has offered a viable solution to the healthcare industry to improve patient identification, ensure data integrity and authenticity and reduce redundancy.
One of the critical applications of biometric technology in the healthcare industry is in electronic health records (EHR). Various biometrics technologies, including fingerprint scanning, iris scanning, and facial recognition, among others, can be applied to the EHRs to ensure information security, privacy and integrity. The use of biometrics has enabled healthcare organizations to reduce fraudulent use and exchange of personal health records. In addition, healthcare providers can efficiently access accurate medical information and effectively react to medical emergencies. Other applications of biometric technology include access control, billing management, workforce management and workflow optimization.
Some of the key technologies used in biometrics include fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, facial recognition, and voice recognition, among others. Depending on the application, healthcare organizations can deploy numerous technologies within the healthcare facilities to ensure optimum security and workflow efficiency. For instance, fingerprint recognition can be used to provide basic access controls and identification functions, whereas a combination of such recognition techniques can be deployed for accessing critical locations and sensitive information within the healthcare facility. Moreover, use of touch-less recognition techniques such as facial, voice and iris recognition, can enable organizations to avoid contamination and infections.
Companies operating in the biometrics market are engaged in developing specialized biometric technologies for the healthcare industry. Some of the leading companies which offer biometrics technology to the healthcare industry include SRI International, BIO-key International, Inc., Morpho SAS, iTouch Biometrics, LLC., FST Biometrics Corporation, and NEC Corporation, among others.