"This seems to be a fairly broad project," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance in Princeton Junction, N.J. The industry group has for some time been advocating the use of smart cards in health care applications through its Healthcare Industry Council.

Although a few hospitals have begun implementing similar networks for patient identification and authentication applications, there are only a few cases in the U.S. similar to the effort in New York, Vanderhoof said.

Such projects are also under way at Denver Health , Beverly Hospital and Addison Gilbert Hospital in Massachusetts, and Heritage Valley Health System in Beaver, Pa., according to the Smart Card Alliance.

Initially, Mount Sinai will use the smart cards in emergency rooms to identify patients and gain access to their medical histories, Nelson said.

The 64KB cards will let Mount Sinai incorporate up to 27 pages of encrypted medical history, including data on chronic diseases, current medications and possibly even compressed EKG information, Nelson said.