Smart Card Health Role in Rational Use of Medicines The objective of this study is to examine the role of smart cared in health and their role in the rational use of medicines. Smart cards are very small and very secure and serve to protect patient privacy. Smart cards contain digital logs with location, date, time, and the individual's stamp to record every transaction. Smart cards also may contain digital prescriptions therefore mistakes made with prescriptions that are handwritten are eliminated and specifically as to the "quantity or quality of medications." (HealthOne, 2011)

How the Smart Card Works

The smart card uses technology that stores a patient's personal health information on a microprocessor chip embedded in the card that is the size of a credit card but that has a "small metal contact plate on the front which is how the reader accesses the medical information stored on the chip" and this is accomplished only with the permission of the patient who enters a PIN code. (Gemalto, 2011) The patient's PIN code is set by the patient at the time the smart card is issued. (Gemalto, 2011, paraphrased) The establishment of accurate patient identification who is receiving healthcare services is key in improvements to healthcare service delivery.

II. Smart Health Card Provisions

The work of Hsu, Li, and Liu entitled "ADRs and Smart Health Cards" reports that the use of "computerized physician order entry and online alerts to reduce medication errors are common elements of medication safety policy." (2006) Hus,...

(Hsu, Li, and Liu, 2006) Reports state that the system has the capability of detecting drug-drug interactions for prescriptions given from different hospitals by checking the electronic prescription records on the patient's National Health Insurance (NHI) integrated circuit (IC) card." (Hsu, Li, and Liu, 2006) Four types of information are reported to be stored on the NHI IC card including:
(1) Personal information;

(2) NHI-related information;

(3) Medical service information (including drug allergies, long-term care prescriptions, ambulatory care prescriptions and certain medical treatments); and (4) Public health information (including immunization records and willingness to donate organs) (Hsu, Li, and Liu, 2006)

III. Detection of Duplicate Medications

The work of Hsu, et al. (2011) entitled "Online detection of potential duplicate medications and changes of physician behavior for outpatients visiting multiple hospitals using national health insurance smart cards in Taiwan" reports on doctor shopping or "hospital shopping which means changing doctors or hospitals without professional referral for the same or similar illness conditions" and states that this practice is common in Hong…