Two years after taking a licence for the technology (CI No 578), British Telecommunications Plc has announced that the first application of Drexler Technology Corp’s LaserCard is in a London hospital, for the storage of pregnancy records (CI No 1,070). British Telecom’s Recallcards are the size of normal credit cards, with a large optical storage area with capacity of 2Mb. British Telecom points out that they have a far larger memory capacity than SmartCards and are more suitable because previous entries remain on the card. They are not damaged by magnetic fields or electrostatic discharges, and data cannot be erased. The company maintains, however, that there will be room in the market for both SmartCards and LaserCards. British Telecom has revealed that the 12-month hospital experiment – which started in September – involves 100 pregnant women being given the RecallCards on which to keep their pregnancy records. Data is placed onto the optical strips via an infra-red laser beam, and a monitor allows additions to records; the cards are then retained by the patients, and updated on each visit. The current trial includes 13 British Telecom 5200 personal computers in locations throughout the hospital, the company’s TNet-100 local area network, linking them to the hospital’s ICL mainframe, drives from Nippon Conlux Co, with the actual cards still manufactured by Drexler Technology. The software was developed by British Telecom in conjunction with the hospital’s obstetric staff. British Telecom refuses to give details of either its own investment in the project, or how much a hospital could reasonably expect to pay for a system; a spokesman was only prepared to say that the laser kit should be twice the cost of a CD player, with the cards costing around UKP2 each. By looking to sell complete systems from the end of 1989, British Telecom is pinning its hopes on a rapid adoption of computers in the health service in general. Only a handful of hospitals in the UK currently possess any form of personal computer network, though some most have terminals connected to a mainframe. It is envisaged that hospitals will require between 10 and 15 personal computers to make the system operational, while a complete records system would need to allow medical staff outside of hospitals, such as general practitioners, to make adjustments to records. Nevertheless, it optimistically sees the RecallCard as a first step in establishing a pan-European personal medical record card. It is not the only European company with such hopes, as another licensee, Olivetti, is set to introduce a similar sysytem in Italy. British Telecom’s application is, though, claimed to be the first of its kind in Europe, despite the fact that some 25 firms have licensed LaserCards from Drexler. British Telecom, which has a worldwide licence, says that it is considering a number of other fields, including medicine, financial services and electronic publishing.
