FaceTec Aims to Curb Healthcare Identity Fraud with 3D Face Verification

- Mismatched or duplicate patient records are a significant patient safety issue; one in five patient matches within a single healthcare organization can be incorrect, and this rate can be as high as 50% when exchanging data between different facilities. These errors can lead to misdiagnoses, medication errors, and unnecessary procedures. - Health systems like Memorial Hermann using Epic's EHR rely on an Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) to mitigate this issue. The EMPI uses deterministic and probabilistic algorithms to find and merge duplicate records by comparing demographic data like name, birth date, and social security number. However, its effectiveness is limited by data entry errors and inconsistencies. - The lack of a national patient identifier in the U.S., due to a legislative ban, is a primary barrier to achieving seamless data exchange, or interoperability. This forces health IT systems to rely on less precise demographic data for patient matching, a foundational challenge for standards like HL7 FHIR which are designed to facilitate data sharing. - For frontline clinicians, patient identification issues are a major source of frustration and inefficiency. A 2016 study found that patient misidentification wastes an average of 28.2 minutes per clinician shift and that 86% of surveyed providers had witnessed a medical error due to incorrect patient identification. - Medical identity theft leads to corrupted health records with false information, which can have life-threatening consequences for future care and can be difficult for patients to correct. The financial toll includes an estimated $17.4 million in average annual losses per facility from denied insurance claims. - FaceTec's technology creates a 3D "FaceMap" from a video selfie to confirm a person is physically present, which is more secure than a static 2D photo. This biometric data is then bound to a scannable UR Code (a type of QR code) that also contains verified identity information, creating a portable and secure link between the patient and their data that doesn't require a centralized database.