Hi Axel,
Appreciate the suggestion. Unfortunately a printed ID card would not be ideal... as these will definitely be lost / stolen or misplaced.
We have brainstormed this issue (among ourselves) an we realised that GNU Health allows us to have one or more means off identifying a patient. This is what we have come up so far:
1) We will use the current hospital paper File ID as the PUID in GNU Health.
2) We will continue down the path of Biometrics as a way of identifying a patient - but the fingerprint ID will become an alternate ID (rather than the PUID) on the GNU Health patient record. If a finger print is not possible then we just omit it - relying on the alternate ID's. Initially we will demo / proof of concept with a standalone finger / palm reader (see * below).
3) A photo will also be taken and put on file.
4) The patient's government issued health book ID (theoretically unique) - to be added as an alternate ID on the GNU Health record.
5) The patient QR code will be label printed - stuck on the paper file - giving us a quick reference back to the electronic record.
6) And we will take advantage of how the GNU Health patient search is able to do full/wild card searches across PUID and alternate ID's.
* If we end up moving forward with GNU Health then we would consider commissioning a Tryton Biometrics module to streamline further.
Regards,
Robert