MEDICAL INFORMATION TRANSPONDER IMPLANT

Abstract: A passive electrical transponder (20) may be encoded with a code corresponding to medical information, and the transponder (20) directly transplanted in a patient's underarm area (22). The information may then be accessed with an electromagnetic hand held reader (26) which is brought into proximity of the transponder (20). The medical information may itself be directly encoded into the transponder (20), or a code used which is then keyed to a corresponding data entry in a data bank (30) accessible over telecommunication lines (32). With this invention, medical information may be reliably recorded, maintained, and accessed with minimal patient involvement in order to achieve a high degree of reliability and accuracy.

Description: MEDICAL INFORMATION TRANSPONDER IMPLANT Background and Summary of the Invention Over the years, there have been many devices proposed for use in recording and associating medical information with an individual. Most commonly, this medical information includes the basic information neces¬ sary for emergency treatment such as blood type, allergic drug reactions, closest relative, any on-going medica¬ tions, and other similar kinds of data. In the prior art, various kinds of fill-in-the-blank cards, tags, labels and the like are available for use. These may stored in a wallet, worn as a bracelet or necklace, asso¬ ciated with a shoe or other article of clothing, or oth¬ erwise associated or attached to an individual. These prior art devices have met with limited success, for various reasons. One drawback encountered with these prior art devices is the limited amount of information which may be conveniently recorded and carried. Secondly, the infor¬ mation is typically recorded by the individual himself and is therefore subject to mistake and/or error due to the fact that the individual is rarely medically trained. Therefore, the medical information must first be obtained from a doctor or other trained medical personnel and errors may develop through merely communicating this information to the individual. For the same reason, not all of the more pertinent information may be recorded as it may not be known or appreciated by the individual. Similarly, updating the information occurs only haphaz¬ ardly, subject to the whim of the individual. There may also be problems encountered in retrieving this informa- tion at the time of its need. The location of the data must first be ascertained, and then the data correctly read from the card or other means used to record the data. Unhappily, an individual's own handwriting may be sufficiently bad to prevent the reading of data even after location of the data card. Additionally, the data entry on the card may have been obliterated or otherwise obscured. All of these difficulties represent drawbacks in the various approaches in the prior art which have limited the widespread adoption and use of these prior art devices. The inventors herein are also aware of a passive electrical transponder which has been used in the prior art to mark or identify inventory items and even live¬ stock with an identifying number or code for inventory purposes. The passive electrical transponder is quite small, generally comprising a cylinder 2 mm in diameter by 11 mm in length, and its code may be conveniently read by an electromagnetic hand held reader. In operation, the hand held reader is brought into proximity of the transponder and emits a low frequency magnetic field to activate the passive transponder and thereby cause it to transmit its encoded data to the reader. With this par¬ ticular commercial device, no battery or other source of electrical power is included in the passive transponder which helps contribute to its small size. One of the patents which have issued which describes these commer- cially available passive transponders and hand held read¬ ers is U.S. Patent 5,041,826, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. In this patent, the patentee suggests that the primary object of the device is for identifying an object, animal or person. However, the inventors herein are not aware of any usage presently made of this device for identifying humans. Furthermore, this device is presently used to merely identify an ob¬ ject or the like for inventory purposes, and such appli- cation would not seem to be particularly adaptable for use with humans as much less intrusive and convenient means are already available for such purposes, including driver's licenses, and other forms of "identification". In a novel and unique approach, the inventors herein have succeeded in conceiving of the use of the passive transponder for direct implantation in a human with the transponder being encoded to correspond to ap¬ propriate medical information in one of several ways. In practice, the passive transponder would be encoded and would then be implanted directly into a human in a conve¬ niently accessible location, such as under the arm in the armpit. Because of its small size, it would be unobtru¬ sive and barely even noticeable to the patient. At the same time, the transponder could be encoded in one of several ways to provide ready and complete access to a wide variety of medical information. Furthermore, the medical information will have been verified and stored by trained medical professionals such that its accuracy can be relied upon even in emergency situations. With presently commercially available devices, the transponder may be encoded with up to sixty-four binary bits of data. This memory size is expected to be in¬ creased as the passive transponder is further developed and improved over time. With this memory size, much information could be directly encoded and stored in the transponder itself. With at least one commercial device, there are three different ways to encode information into the transponder. The first of these is to encode the information at the time that the chip is manufactured. Ordinarily, if encoding is performed at this time, then a unique number would be encoded into the transponder and it could then be used to access data stored in a data bank, as explained more completely herein. Secondly, the memory chip may be encoded after manufacture, but prior to sealing the chip into the transponder envelope. If the chip were to be encoded at this stage, then custom encoding could be achieved which could be medical infor¬ mation associated with any particular patient. Thirdly, the chip could be manufactured and sealed in the tran¬ sponder envelope without encoding, and perhaps even im- planted in the patient. Encoding could then take place through a read/write operation with the electromagnetic reader as described herein. If encoded in this manner, custom encoding could be utilized to directly encode the transponder with medical information corresponding to the particular patient. With any of the three methods for encoding the transponder, a unique identifier may be utilized and the identifier used to access data in a remote data bank. The encoded information contained in the passive transponder could be used to access a data bank which would be immediately available, for example over tele¬ phone lines, such that trained medical personnel could readily obtain the medical information on an emergency basis. With the remote data bank option, the amount of data which may be stored is virtually unlimited, the data bank may be updated or changed as the patient's informa¬ tion changed, and all of this data entry, alteration, and accessing would be handled by trained personnel in order to provide reliable medical data for the safety and bene- fit of the patient, as well as for reduced legal liabili¬ ty. As is well known, there may be tremendous legal liability which could result from reliance on inaccurate data. This inaccurate data could result in any one of the many ways discussed above in connection with the prior art attempts to solve this problem. With the pres- ent invention the legal liability would be effectively minimized and could also be isolated and controlled for insurance purposes with those who are trained and skilled in handling this kind of data. With these advantages, it is expected that many medical personnel will welcome the adoption and implementation of the present invention. While the principal advantages and features of the present invention have been described above, a more com¬ plete and thorough understanding of the invention may be attained by referring to the drawing and description of the preferred embodiment which follow. Brief Description of the Drawing The drawing is a perspective view of a passive transponder implanted in the underarm of a patient with a reader juxtaposed for reading its encoded data. Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiment As shown in the drawing, a passive transponder 20 may be conveniently implanted just beneath the skin and the underarm area 22 of a patient 24. A hand held elec¬ tromagnetic reader 26 may be brought into close proximity of the passive transponder 20 and its encoded information read thereby in a non-invasive manner. Similarly, the electromagnetic reader 26 may be used in a read/write mode to directly encode the transponder 20. Alternately, the memory chip (not shown because of its relatively smaller size) contained in the transponder 20 may be encoded at the time of manufacture or prior to its being sealed in the transponder 20. A decoder controller 28 may be used to display the encoded information and also, decoder controller 28 may be used to access a data bank 30 over a telecommunication line 32. With presently available commercial devices, the passive transponder 20 may be encoded with up to sixty- four binary bits of data for the direct encoding and reading therefrom of medical information including blood type, allergic reactions, on-going medication, and such other information as might be needed or desirable. In a second mode of implementation, the encoded information contained within the passive transponder 20 may instead be used to access data bank 30 over telecommunication lines 32 in order to obtain the same, or even a much larger amount of information relating to the particular patient 24. With this second mode of implementation, the data entries contained in data bank 30 may be convenient¬ ly altered, updated, or otherwise modified by trained medical personnel to maintain the information current with respect to the particular patient 24 as time passes. The accuracy and reliability of the data, whether encoded directly in passive transponder 20 or stored in data bank 30, is expected to be virtually flawless in view of the fact that only trained personnel will be entering data as opposed to relying on individual patients determining and entering their own data on personal ID cards or other prior art devices as are presently in use. There are various changes and modifications which may be made to the invention as would be apparent to those skilled in the art. However, these changes or modifications are included in the teaching of the disclo¬ sure, and it is intended that the invention be limited only by the scope of the claims appended hereto.

Claims: What Is Claimed Is: 1. A medical information storage device for hu¬ mans, said device comprising an implantable transponder, said transponder having means for being encoded with a code corresponding to said medical information associated with a particular human, said transponder being adapted for convenient retrieval of said code after implantation in the human to which said medical information is associ¬ ated. 2. The device of Claim 1 wherein said transponder is adapted for retrieval by non-invasive means. 3. The device of Claim 2 wherein said non-invasive means comprises an electromagnetic reader. 4. The device of Claim 3 wherein said electromag¬ netic reader has means for encoding said transponder. 5. The device of Claim 3 wherein said transponder is passive and thereby does not include a source of elec¬ trical power. 6. The device of Claim 5 wherein said transponder is a cylinder approximately 2 mm in diameter and approxi¬ mately 11 mm in length. 7. The device of Claim 6 wherein said transponder is adapted for implantation under said human's underarm. 8. The device of Claim 1 wherein said code is a unique tag, said unique tag being associated with an entry in an external data base, said data base being thereby external to said transponder and containing said medical information in alterable form. 9. The device of Claim 1 wherein said code is directly translatable into said medical information. 10. The device of Claim 1 wherein said code is a 64 bit binary number. 11. A medical information storage device for hu¬ mans, said device comprising an implantable transponder, said transponder having means for being encoded with a code, said code corresponding to a data entry in a remote data bank, said data entry comprising said medical infor¬ mation, and an electromagnetic reader for accessing said transponder to read said code. 12. The device of Claim 11 wherein said electromag¬ netic reader comprises a hand held reader including means for accessing said code contained within said transponder in a non-invasive manner. 13. The device of Claim 12 wherein said electromag¬ netic reader has means for encoding said transponder. 14. The device of Claim 12 wherein said transponder is passive. 15. The device of Claim 14 wherein said transponder is a cylinder approximately 2 mm in diameter and approxi¬ mately 11 mm in length. 16. A medical information storage device for hu¬ mans, said device comprising an implantable transponder, said transponder having means for being encoded with a plurality of data comprising medical information associ- ated with a particular human, and an electromagnetic reader for accessing said encoded medical information to directly read said data from said transponder. 17. The device of Claim 16 wherein said electromag¬ netic reader includes means for accessing said encoded data in a non-invasive manner. 18. The device of Claim 17 wherein said transponder is passive. 19. The device of Claim 18 wherein said transponder is a cylinder approximately 2 mm in diameter and approxi¬ mately 11 mm in length. 20. The device of Claim 16 wherein said electromag¬ netic reader has means for encoding said transponder.

Inventors: ANDREWS WINSTON A, KNAPP TERRY RUSSELL, ANDREWS, WINSTON, A., KNAPP, TERRY, RUSSELL
Applicants: LIPOMATRIX INC, LIPOMATRIX INCORPORATED
Application year: 1993
Main classification: G08C17
IPC codes: A61B5, A61B19, A61F2, G08C17