I found a fascinating HIT article buried in the Metro section of today’s Washington Post that minded me of the excellent Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from 1990 — Total Recall.

Evidently a company called Verichip is selling an implantable chip carrying a 16 digit patient ID number. The chip is implanted in a person, usually someone suffering from dementia, in a particular place on the body. When patients arrive unconscious or with dementia at an emergency room with a Verichip scanner (according to this article three DC area ERs now have one), the facility will scan the patient for the chip. If the ER finds the chip, ER personnel will use the patient ID scanned from the chip to log into a Verichip web site where the patient’s medical history is stored. Wow.