"The English word mark (Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, No. 5480) is from the Greek word charagma (pronounced Khar'-ag-mah). Charagma is connected by The Expanded Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words to stigma, Strong's No. 4742, in which Strong's references stigma back to the Greek word stizo, then defines stizo as follows:

. . . to prick, stick, incise, or punch for recognition of ownership. . . Scar of service: a mark

Devices being marketed as helping doctors with stored medical information, but will also track every person as latest part of largest police state in human history.

 

The VeriChip, the size of a grain of rice, is inserted under the skin with a needle in a procedure that [currently] takes less than 20 minutes to complete.

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Oct. 13, 2004WASHINGTON - Medical milestone or privacy invasion?

A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for implantation in a patient’s arm can speed vital information about a patient’s medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes.

With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.

Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its name and price on the cashier’s screen.

Chip's dual uses raise alarm

The VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be scanned, and revealed, in a doctor’s office or hospital. With that code, the health providers can unlock that portion of a secure database that holds that person’s medical information, including allergies and prior treatment. The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with each medical visit.

The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the chip’s possible dual use for tracking people’s movements — as well as speeding delivery of their medical information to emergency rooms — has raised alarm.

“If privacy protections aren’t built in at the outset, there could be harmful consequences for patients,” said Emily Stewart, a policy analyst at the Health Privacy Project.

To protect patient privacy, the devices should reveal only vital medical information, like blood type and allergic reactions, needed for health care workers to do their jobs, Stewart said.

An information technology guru at Detroit Medical Center, however, sees the benefits of the devices and will lobby for his center’s inclusion in a VeriChip pilot program.

“One of the big problems in health care has been the medical records situation. So much of it is still on paper,” said David Ellis, the center’s chief futurist and co-founder of the Michigan Electronic Medical Records Initiative.

'Part of the future of medicine'

As “medically mobile” patients visit specialists for care, their records fragment on computer systems that don’t talk to each other.

“It’s part of the future of medicine to have these kinds of technologies that make life simpler for the patient,” Ellis said. Pushing for the strongest encryption algorithms to ensure hackers can’t nab medical data as information transfers from chip to reader to secure database, will help address privacy concerns, he said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced $139 million in grants to help make real President Bush’s push for electronic health records for most Americans within a decade.

William A. Pierce, an HHS spokesman, could not say whether VeriChip and its accompanying secure database of medical records fit within that initiative.

“Exactly what those technologies are is still to be sorted out,” Pierce said. “It all has to respect and comport with the privacy rules.”

Applied Digital gave away scanners to a few hundred animal shelters and veterinary clinics when it first entered the pet market 15 years ago. Now, 50,000 such scanners have been sold.

To kickstart the chip’s use among humans, Applied Digital will provide $650 scanners for free at 200 of the nation’s trauma centers.

Implantation costs $150 to $200
In pets, installing the chip runs about $50. For humans, the chip implantation cost would be $150 to $200, said Angela Fulcher, an Applied Digital spokeswoman.

Fulcher could not say whether the cost of data storage and encrypted transmission of medical information would be passed to providers.

Because the VeriChip is invisible, it’s also unclear how health care workers would know which unconscious patients to scan. Company officials say if the chip use becomes routine, scanning triceps for hidden chips would become second nature at hospitals.

Ultimately, the company hopes patients who suffer from such ailments as diabetes and Alzheimer’s or who undergo complex treatments, like chemotherapy, would have chips implanted. If the procedure proves as popular for use in humans as in pets, that could mean up to 1 million chips implanted in people. So far, just 1,000 people across the globe have had the devices implanted, very few of them in the United States.

The company’s chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, is one of a half dozen executives who had chips implanted. Silverman said chips implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

Such security uses are rare in the United States.

Meanwhile, the chip has been used for pure whimsy: Club hoppers in Barcelona, Spain, now use the microchip to enter a VIP area and, through links to a different database, speed payment much like a smartcard.
 

People-tracking closer to reality
Deal forged to equip VeriChip with global positioning satellite
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42058
December 23, 2004

Setting the stage for controversial tracking technology, the satellite
telecommunications company ORBCOMM has signed an agreement with VeriChip Corp., maker of the world's first implantable radio frequency identification microchip.

VeriChip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital, will work with ORBCOMM to develop and market new military, security and healthcare applications in the U.S. and around the world, the company said.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Applied Digital has created and successfully
field-tested a prototype of an implant for humans with GPS, or global
positioning satellite, technology.

The device, about the size of a grain of rice, contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over it.

Satellites monitored 24 hours a day from ORBCOMM's Network Control Center in Dulles, Va. (photo courtesy: ORBCOMM)

Once inserted into a human, it can be tracked by GPS technology and the
information relayed wirelessly to the Internet, where an individual's
location, movements and vital signs can be stored in a database for future
reference.

"ORBCOMM's relationship with VeriChip provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally," ORBCOMM CEO Jerry Eisenberg said.

Initially, after privacy concerns and verbal protests over marketing the
technology for government use, Applied backed away from public discussion about such implants and the possibility of using them to usher in a "cashless society."

In addition, to quell privacy concerns, the company issued numerous denials, stating it had no plans for implants.

When WND reported in April 2002 that the company planned such implant
technology, Applied Digital spokesman Matthew Cossolotto accused WND of intentionally printing falsehoods.

Less than three weeks later, however, the company issued a press release
announcing that it was accelerating development on a GPS implant.

PETER LEWIS ON TECH
RFID: Getting Under Your Skin?
Chip implants present some intriguing possibilities-and raise a host of concerns about privacy and ethics. By Peter Lewis

Some people consider radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to be cutting-edge technology. But bleeding-edge? Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha announced recently that he, several members of his staff, and some 160 employees of a new, $30 million anticrime computer center in Mexico City, had all been implanted with RFID chips.

The identification chips, contained in a glass capsule that's slightly larger than a grain of rice, were injected into their upper arms by a syringe-like device. (¡Ouch!) When activated by a scanning signal, the chips send out a unique 64-bit code.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/ontech/0,15704,675442,00.html
 

The retailer's push into radio-frequency identification means big business for gear makers, big savings in Bentonville. Christine Y. Chen June 28, 2004

In the last week of April, Kimberly-Clark wrapped, sealed, and tagged several pallets of Scott paper towels and shipped them to a Wal-Mart distribution center in Sanger, Texas. Small electronic tags affixed to the side of each case of paper towels allowed Wal-Mart to track their every move. The significance? The experiment marked the first step in a mad dash to implement radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.

The world's largest retailer has demanded that its top 100 suppliers implement the technology by January 2005, thereby greatly reducing distribution time and costs. And investors looking to cash in on the scramble for compliance can divide the beneficiaries into three baskets:

Hardware
Pure-play RFID companies are few and far between, but there are a handful. Two companies creating buzz right now are small, privately held outfits. Matrics makes the RFID tags and readers that are used at airports in Las Vegas and Hong Kong. And Gillette purchased 500 million tags from Alien Technology. Some public companies are embracing the technology too. Label printer Zebra Technologies (ZBRA, $81), for instance, is working on tags. Although RFID makes up only a tiny portion of their revenues, big tech companies such as Philips (PHG, $27) and Texas Instruments (TXN, $25) are also getting into the RFID market.

Software and systems
RFID technology doesn't stop with the actual tags and readers. Suppliers and retailers will need new software to handle the mass quantities of data amassed by the chips. Bear Stearns analyst Philip Alling believes that of all the software providers, Manhattan Associates (MANH, $30) may be best positioned to capitalize on RFID. The company also has a $2 million equity stake in Alien.

Retailers
The best strategy might be to bet on the companies forcing the industry change. That, of course, means Wal-Mart (WMT, $57). If its January deadline is met, analysts estimate that the mega-retailer could save as much as $8 billion next year. Other companies are joining the race as well. Both Target (TGT, $46) and Albertson's (ABS, $24) have started pilot programs. Bear Stearns' Alling says investors shouldn't count on an instant payoff: "I would expect some snags along the way. RFID won't happen overnight, but it's definitely going to happen."

http://www.ti.com/tiris/docs/news/in_the_news/2004/06-28.shtml