The elderly and infirm have long been targets for fraudsters and other criminals, and the fear of being taken advantage of might make some of these people reluctant to use home healthcare services.

HID Global, Austin, Texas-based maker of security badges and identity control systems, is trying to provide some peace of mind for homebound patients and their families with a new service that relies on near-field communication (NFC) technology and consumer-grade mobile devices to authenticate identity tags.

In healthcare, HID Global is marketing the service, called Trusted Tag, to home-health agencies. “The basic premise is, you’re going to use your phone to verify identities of visitors,” said Mark Robinton, manager for technology innovation at HID Global.

When a nurse or other home-health worker goes to a client’s home for the first time, the visitor taps an NFC-enabled badge against a compatible smartphone or tablet. The badge directs the mobile device to a URL that changes each time, then the home-health professional logs in to HID’s Trusted Tag server with a one-time password.

“They don’t need to have an app running on the phone,” Robinton said.
The unique login page is meant to prevent fraud, as static URLs are “easy to copy or clone or manipulate,” he said.

“Our goal is to provide a solution to help mitigate some of that risk.”

HID Global announced Trusted Tag next month, and will officially launch the service around midyear, according to Robinton. HID already has built an application programming interface for healthcare providers, payers and software vendors to integrate identity verification into existing apps, according to Robinton.

Right now, the company is “in pilot discussions” with several different organizations which Robinton declines to name. Expect an announcement on launches in the next few weeks, pilots for about three months, then some results by the end of the summer, he said. HID will make adjustments to Trusted Tag based on the pilots.

Robinton says the pilot likely will be on Android devices. At the moment, the iPhone and iPad lack NFC capability, but many of the newest Android, Windows, BlackBerry and even Symbian smartphones have it, as do a handful of Android and Windows tablets.

“Our long-term vision is really technology-agnostic,” Robinton said.