The Growing Importance of Accurate Patient Identification in Healthcare – #biometricchat November 3rd, 11a.m. – 12 p.m. EST

John TraderOctober 26, 2011Leave a Reply

M2SYS is hosting a tweet chat on the importance of patient identification in health care.are.

Tweet chat on patient ID in healthcare

It comes as no surprise that accurate patient identification has been number one on the list of Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations’ (JCAHO) National Patient Safety Goals since 2003. Medical identity fraud and inaccurate patient identification continue to be a growing problem in healthcare, causing a precipitous drop in the quality of patient care along with rising liability and litigation costs. The problem of duplicate medical records alone due to inadequate and outdated patient identification systems is frustrating healthcare through medication errors, transfusion errors, testing errors, wrong patient procedures and the discharge of infants to the wrong families.

The call to adopt digitization of medical records and stringent patient identification standards through the use of new technologies have recently increased by authorities that provide leadership on global health matters such as the World Health Organization. So how is the healthcare industry faring to adopt more accurate patient identification procedures? Is medical identity theft still a growing concern within the healthcare industry? What can be done to prevent duplicate medical records? What other issues are at stake?

Join us on Thursday November 3rd from 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. EST for a tweet chat about patient identification in healthcare. Our guest will be Jim St. Clair (@jstclair1), Senior Director, Interoperability and Standards at the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) who will be sharing his knowledge and answering questions on the topic. We will also ask Jim about his thoughts on using biometric technology for patient identification.

Just in case you are interested in participating, but are new to Tweet chats, please read this post which outlines the instructions and procedures. We hope that you will join us for the discussion, and please spread the word among your colleagues and friends.

Do you have any questions that you would like to ask Jim? Please send them to: john@m2sys.com or come prepared with your questions, comments and feedback next Thursday!

M2SYS Launches White Paper Library on Web site

John TraderOctober 19, 2011Leave a Reply

M2SYS releases a library of White papers on biometric technology

M2SYS White Papers

Recently, we launched a new page on our Web site for current and future M2SYS biometric research White papers written on a variety of topics. Separated by tabs that categorize the White papers based on the vertical markets to which they apply, currently you can find the following research:

1. Patient Misidentification in Healthcare - “Eliminate Patient Fraud and Increase Patient Identification Accuracy with Vascular and Iris Recognition Biometric Identification Technology” – this White paper examines the growing concern of medical identity theft and patient misidentification, measuring the negative impact they have on patient care and how healthcare facilities can use palm vein and iris recognition biometric technology to correctly identify patients.

2. Retail Point of Sale (POS)/Workforce Mangement – “Eliminating Time Theft and Increasing Profits with PC-Based Biometrics” – This White paper details the effect that time theft, manual labor tracking methods, and non-compliance can have on employee productivity and the corporate bottom line. It then studies how PC-based biometric identification technology is a smart solution to halting these productivity and profit killers and why companies should consider incorporating biometrics for employee identification.

3. U.S. Biometrics – “The Perception of Biometrics in the United States” (co-written by Ravi Das from biometricnews.net) – Biometric technology is quickly being adopted across the globe for a multitude of purposes ranging from border security to voter registration to benefit entitlement parity. Despite the wide scale adoption of biometrics in other countries, it has been slow to catch on here in the U.S. This White paper studies theories as to why biometrics has not been embraced in this country, fear about how biometrics affects privacy and civil liberties, what steps biometric vendors can take to educate the public on the technology and a conclusion explaining what can possibly be done to increase U.S. adoption rates.

4. Global Biometrics - (White paper forthcoming) – Due to be released within the next month, this White paper will focus on future applications and growth areas of biometric technology as seen through the eyes of biometric vendors from all over the world.

We hope that you enjoy our collection of White papers and welcome any comments or feedback on the content. Have a suggestion for a White paper topic? Let us know in the comments section below.

Announcing the First #Biometric Tweet Chat Hosted by @M2SYS Technology

John TraderSeptember 22, 20118 Replies

Tweet Chat on Biometric Technology

When: October 6, 2011

11:00 am EST, 8:00 am PST, 16:00 pm BST, 17:00 pm (CEST), 23:00 pm (SGT), 0:00 (JST)

Where: Tweetchat.com

What: The First tweet chat about biometric technology

Topic: Biometrics and Privacy

October the 6th, 2011 will mark the first tweet chat on biometric technology of its kind. After running a couple of polls and talking with some industry professionals, we thought it was a good time to start a chat that helps educate, promotes communication and openly discusses challenges and issues that the biometrics industry faces. Plus, it will also provide an opportunity to take a look into the future and ponder what changes may lay ahead and how they can affect the many different vertical markets that biometric technology touches.

Not familiar with a tweet chat? A Twitter tweet chat is a pre-scheduled chat on Twitter where participants can discuss and learn in real time through the use of updates (tweets) about topics of interest with other industry professionals and anyone else who wishes to participate. Formal Twitter tweet chats are arranged in advance and occur at a specific time. The biometric tweet chat will include a formal agenda with a specific leader or “speaker”, and involve a free flowing discussion between all participants.

To make tweet chats easier to follow, a Twitter hashtag is used for each chat so you can easily follow the conversation by creating a separate search within your favorite Twitter platform. The hashtag that will be used for the first chat is #biometricchat Although it is possible to participate in a tweet chat through a platform such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, we recommend using an online platform like Tweetchat which makes it very easy to follow the discussion, add in your own tweets and ask questions to the guest or other participants. Simply click on “Sign In” on the top right hand corner and authorize the application (if you are already signed into Twitter) or enter your Twitter handle and password. You will then see a hashtag symbol at the top of the page (#) and an open field directly next to it. Type in “biometricchat” and the stream will then begin to list all of the tweets that are marked with the hash tag #biometricchat. If you want to contribute to the conversation, type your tweet into the box below “Message to #biometricchat” and then hit your “enter” key or click on “update.” You can also @reply to tweets, or retweet (RT) using the symbols on the right hand side of each tweet in the stream.

The format of the first chat will be single question, topic based Q&A which means that the chat will be on a general topic (privacy and biometrics), that asks specific, numbered questions to a guest throughout the chat within that topic. Each question gets roughly 15 minutes, and the chat lasts one hour. Participants can follow along the chat stream, and add any answers of their own to the questions, plus add opinions, additional questions and any other thoughts. We expect that everyone understands there is a level of respect, decency and courtesy which is expected from participants and this is not an opportunity to castigate, berate or intentionally demean any guest or participant in the chat.

Our first guest for the inaugural biomteric tweet chat will be James Baker who will be representing the NO2ID campaign in the UK. James has previously written a guest blog post about biometrics and privacy for M2SYS in which he articulates his viewpoint on the perception of biometrics from privacy advocates and suggestions on how the industry can improve the technology to work towards privacy enhancement. James (and possibly some additional colleagues from the campaign TBD) will share; thoughts about biometrics and privacy to help everyone understand the issues that they see, the reasoning behind their views and the fundamentals of their interpretations. We are grateful that they will be our guests for the first biometric tweet chat. This discussion is not meant to be biased, but rather a free flow of conversation and open communication about biometric technology and privacy.

If there is a question that you would like us to include during the chat, please submit it to: john@m2sys.com and we will do our best to include it during the chat. If the first biometric tweet chat goes well, we will continue to schedule the chat for the first Thursday of every month at the same time.

We look forward to seeing everyone on the 6th of October, and hope that you will spread the message to any colleagues or friends that you feel would benefit from the chat. Please feel free to leave any comments below.

Free Webinar – How to use Palm Vein Biometrics to Strengthen PCI and Workforce Management Compliance

John TraderAugust 14, 2011Leave a Reply

M2SYS and Fujitsu will be offering a free webinar on August 30th from 2:00 to 2:30pm EST, 11:00 to 11:30pm PST on how palm vein technology can help to strengthen workforce management and PCI compliance. The webinar will cover how using biometric palm vein technology to strengthen compliance can: help replace passwords with a palm scan, increase record storage security, establish significant cost savings, stop employee buddy punching, improve productivity, create a concrete audit trail, reduce payroll errors and strengthen labor law adherence.

The webinar is geared towards retail compliance officers and human resources/workforce management professionals but is applicable to anyone who would like further education on how vascular biometrics can help to strengthen compliance, lower costs and increase productivity. For more information and to reserve your spot for this 30 minute webinar please click here.

Would you be Willing to Participate in A Tweet Chat on #Biometric Technology?

John TraderJuly 30, 2011Leave a Reply

Take our LinkedIn poll on whether you would like to participate in a weekly or bi-weekly tweet chat about biometric technology.

Tweet Chat on Biometric Technology

Anyone who is a Twitter veteran or even if you are a novice has probably heard of a Tweet Chat. Tweet Chats are pre-arranged chats that happen on Twitter through the use of Twitter updates (aka tweets) that include a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation. They have caught on like wildfire across the Twittersphere and have proven to be an excellent forum to discuss just about any topic that surrounds their customized theme.

We are conducting a poll to see if there is enough interest in establishing a Tweet Chat weekly or once every two weeks to discuss biometric technology. The idea is to bring together industry professionals, journalists, advocates, end users, academics, and anyone else who wants to join in on the conversation about the subject. The forum will be a chance to share and educate with ideas, best practices, opinions, predictions, news, and points of view. Each chat, there will be a topic of discussion to guide the conversation in a targeted direction and a list of questions distributed prior to the chat so that participants can review and prepare themselves for the discussion. In addition, once a month we will add a guest to the format and prepare a series of questions for the guest to answer with the opportunity for participants to chime in with their own answers and opinions as well.

The chat will be centered on bringing people together for insightful and valuable discussions and we expect every participant to be respectful and courteous. We will also make every attempt to schedule the chat at a time that is convenient and can include participants from all parts of the globe but it may be virtually impossible to schedule a chat that is convenient for everyone.

Please click here for a link to the poll.