Is chip implantation care or branding?

A Florida elderly care facility is flying in the face of privacy complaints by planning to implant identity chips in the arms of Alzheimer’s patients. Opponents call it a form of branding, while the care facility and chip manufacturer say will help improve care for Alzheimer’s patients, who often cannot fully communicate their needs or medical history.

As part of the plan, the operators of Alzheimer’s Community Care in West Palm Beach, Florida, will implant a radio frequency identification chip – slightly larger than a grain of rice – under the skin of the patient’s right forearm. The chip will be programmed with the person’s ID and pertinent medical information to help professional caregivers and medical authorities better treat them.

The program is voluntary, chief executive officer Mary Barnes said, requiring either the consent of the patient’s family or the patient themselves, if they are deemed competent to make such a decision.

Each chip will be embedded with a 16-digit ID number that, when scanned in a hospital emergency room, for example, will pop up in the patient’s computerised medical records. The chip does not offer satellite tracking capabilities of a patient.

Not everyone agrees with the concept or the implementation plan. “This whole medical trial really raises some pretty important issues about informed consent,” says Katherine Albrecht, founder of the advocacy group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering.

Albrecht and others feel the plan benefits the chipmaker and care facility, but offers little to the patient or their family. “There are other technologies that are far less invasive and can achieve the same goal,” she said. She cited the MedicAlert bracelet as a viable alternative for Alzheimer’s patients who can’t relay their medical information reliably. These bracelets list a patient’s medical conditions on the reverse side.