Under the initiative announced last week, Mount Sinai Medical Center , the Elmhurst Hospital Center and Siemens Communications Inc. will start deploying around 100,000 smart cards to patients at these hospitals and several affiliates beginning in the second quarter of 2006.

Each hospital in the network will issue smart cards that integrate a patient's identity data with essential health information that can be quickly accessed and routinely updated by health care professionals who are part of the regional smart-card network.

The network will enable portability of patient health care data and help reduce medical errors caused by misinformation or lack of patient data, said Jack Nelson, CIO at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Nelson noted that there is much interest among health care providers and state and federal governments in making health care information more accessible to providers and patients.

The smart-card initiative can make such information portable without the need to invest in the expensive and complex infrastructure that a connected health care network requires, he said. The hospitals involved in the pilot program only need card readers and associated software, he added. National System in Sight