Resumen
Many attempts have been made over the last two decades to computerize the management of patient records using advanced computing and networking facilities across hospitals, clinics, and billing agents. A patient's record represents the key repository for information concerning his or her health care. A truly ubiquitous availability of patient records can greatly improve health care delivery by providing medical personnel with timely access of often critical medical records such as past medical history, blood type, and even next-of-kin information. The emergence of smart card technology is recognized as a potential solution to manage a patient's medical records effectively and accurately. A smart card provides the rich benefits of storing a comprehensive and accurate medical history of a patient while its pocket size offers easy mobility. But, a smart card has yet to gain the mass support critical for wide market acceptance of such technology. A major hindrance of such advancement is attributed to the diverse protocol currently available from various vendors. As such, medical records stored on a smart card from a hospital are not readable by another hospital. In a step toward facilitating a common standard, ISO has standardized the protocol communication between a smart card and a smart card reader based on the ISO 7816 specification family.