Does a hospital need to have an electronic medical record (EMR) system in place to benefit from smart card-based patient ID cards?
Not necessarily. Information on smart cards can be read and used to correctly identify patients, as well as to provide information that a hospital might not have in its database (e.g., a recent prescription or record of care at another facility). A smart card system can be self-contained and does not have to be integrated with other health information systems. That stated, greater efficiencies are gained when data can flow from the card into an electronic medical records system.
