The initial hardware installations in healthcare facilities are scheduled to begin early in the second quarter of 2004, and card distribution will begin after that. The first MediSmart cards will be issued to chronic care patients and patients that need long-term treatments and medications.

Under the terms of the contract, OTI is to generate revenues on hardware, software and licensing fees. During MediSmart’s previous eight month pilot programme, use of the solution reduced CareCross call centre calls by 95%, resulting in significant savings in both treatment time and call centre costs. The OTI MediSmart solution is part of OTI’s SmartID product family and provides verification of patient, physician and patient benefits. The contactless smart card includes:

• Personal identification, biometric authentication, and additional personal data sections which are secured via biometric verification without the need for a mainframe or database of any kind.
• A medical benefit, risk, and management data section, which is only accessible by healthcare professionals. In addition, to provide better communication between healthcare professionals, MediSmart can also hold files for referrals, medical certificates and messages.
• A payment portion that enables e-purse and credit and debit payments.

“The MediSmart solution enables CareCross to manage its risk more effectively and to reduce its reliance on its call centre infrastructure,” said Dr Reinder Nauta of CareCross. “As the number of patient groups increase, the effective communication of guidelines and protocols to manage them becomes a necessity, and MediSmart serves as the ideal communication medium between CareCross and its service provider sites.”

CareCross Health is a primary healthcare provider in South Africa, contracting 150,000 members and a network of more than 1,000 healthcare and service providers.

More Info: http://www.otiglobal.com

Source: On Track Innovations (OTI)

Reprinted with permission from Using RFID (http://www.usingrfid.com/news)

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