This post first appeared on the recently acquired Fortress Identity blog:
Biometrics is the science of identifying people through physical characteristics. It includes technologies that can differentiate people by their facial structure, fingerprints and more. These technologies have been around for decades, but until recently have they been exploding in growth.
With lower costs, improvement in accuracy and acceptance from the public, biometrics is now especially popular with healthcare facilities. Nurses are slowly implementing the new technology into their work procedures to access digitized patient information. Rather than typing in passwords to retrieve vital information, nurses will be using facial recognition technologies to make their work process even more efficient.
With a biometrics password manager, let’s say a facial scanner, they’ll be able to log in simply by looking into a computer monitor. That same facial scanner will log them out as soon as they move away from the computer.
Similarly, nurses who currently use smart badges to gain access to secure important, private areas of the facility will also be moving to biometrics security. Such measures can help guarantee the physical safety of newborns and prevent the theft of narcotics, by making a positive identification of people rather than badges.
In the future, the health care and health insurance industries may rely on biometrics for patient identification purposes as well. Currently, blood banks are now starting to use fingerprint scans of donors to help them comply with federal regulations. The blood bank says it has to turn away less donors without proper ID. It has also reduced the likelihood of duplicate donor records and has been able to stop storing Social Security numbers, a practice that consumers increasingly object to.