Medical supply firm to sell patient RFID chips

Medical-supply company Henry Schein has agreed to distribute implantable radio frequency identification chips to doctors' offices across the country--the first major sales push for the technology since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it for medical use last month.

The rice grain-size devices, called VeriChips, enable doctors and other medical staff to instantly retrieve patients' medical records by scanning chips injected into the fatty tissue in their arms--much like a clerk scanning a can of peas at the grocery store. The distribution deal, announced Wednesday, is a big one for VeriChip maker Applied Digital. Henry Schein, based in Melville, N.Y., sells medical supplies to nearly 115,000 private medical practices in the United States and booked $3.4 billion in sales last year.

Can anyone say....

...HIPPA? I have a real problem with using RFID in this manner. In my mind it doesn't matter that the data is stored in an encrypted state, it can still be read quickly, and then decrytped later on in a more secure location without time constraints. So how can this be HIPPA compliant?