Health insurance company Sanitas SA has signed an agreement with Mastercard and el Banco de Santander to produce the first Smart Card in Spain which combines two services: on the one hand it is a health insurance card entitling the bearer to medical care, but it also doubles up as a credit card. During the first phase of the project it is planned that the card’s embedded chip will store the standard administrative particulars of Sanitas customers such as name, policy number, the type of insurance provided, expiry date, while at a later stage it is intended to include important details about the card-holder’s health, for example, allergies suffered, blood group, whether the member is diabetic. Talking to Computerworld Espana, Evaristo Prieto, director of Information Systems at Sanitas, gave the assurance that sensitive health details would be stored on the card only with the consent of the cardholder. Sanitas, which has chosen to work with Compagnie des Machines Bull SA on the technological front, currently has 3,000 card-reading terminals ready for use in surgeries nationwide. Among the benefits provided by the scheme, when Sanitas policy holders now go to see their doctor, they will not only receive any referral details on paper as usual, but the doctor can also insert the card into the terminal and record the code of any tests that the patient may require. This information will then be available to the respective specialist visited. Prieto explains that the idea of the project which Sanitas has pioneered in Spain is that technological resources and investment should be shared with other companies, although it has taken some time to generate such support. It was as far back as 1992 that Sanitas first came up with a card and terminal technology. Prieto admits that the company had been keeping a watchful eye on similar developments in the German public health service for quite some time. Yet Sanitas surprisingly found itself quite alone; Prieto believes that backing was not then forthcoming, because no one shared our conviction that the technology was not just a passing fancy, but a fundamental step towards improving service for policyholders. Two other health insurance companies are to benefit from this breakthrough. Caja Salud and Previs have now joined Sanitas to share terminals, of which it is hoped there will be 5,000 installed by the end of the year, rising to 8,000 in 1996. It is also foreseen that top Catalan bank la Caixa, working on a similar project for health insurance companies, will produce a terminal that will accept the Sanitas-Mastercard. Prieto also points out that Mastercard has provided considerable financial aid, since it has been anxious to increase market share in Spain, where Visa has a clear lead. It is foreseen that the first cards carrying cardholders’ health information will be available in about nine months’ time.
