Why this exists

Read step eight before this page, because it contains the caveat that governs everything here: there is no US epidemiological estimate of the share of diversion attributable to identity fraud, and IntellaRx does not claim one. National survey data puts theft from a provider at 1.3% of most-recent misuse and multiple-prescriber acquisition at 2.0%. Forgery is an unmeasured fraction of a 6.4% residual.

The defensible case is different and, we think, better. It is about protecting the patient and protecting the integrity of the record:

• A misattributed result harms the wrong person. If a specimen or a dispensing event attaches to the wrong identity, someone who did nothing carries a positive toxicology result, a flag in a monitoring record, or a lost prescription. Identity resolution is a patient protection first.
• Every downstream inference depends on it. Dose calculations, monitoring records and outlier analyses are only as reliable as the identity underneath them.
• It closes the informal-courier gap without requiring anyone to be suspected. See pharmaceutical delivery.
• It gives a prescriber a defensible answer — demonstrating that the medication reached the person it was written for, rather than assuming it.

How it works

Two modalities, chosen because they work at a doorstep and in a collection room:

• Palm-vein imaging reads the subsurface vascular pattern of the hand using near infrared. It requires a live hand with blood in it, works through minor surface damage, and is not lifted from a surface the way a fingerprint can be.
• 3D facial recognition uses depth geometry rather than a flat image, which is what makes it resistant to being fooled by a photograph.

Cross-validation means the two are used against each other and against the enrollment record, so that a single failed read is a prompt to re-check rather than an accusation. A person who cannot enroll in one modality — and some cannot — uses the other.

Enrollment is consented, explained, and reversible. A patient who withdraws consent is not thereby refused their medication; the program falls back to conventional identification and records that it did so.

Questions this raises

Does IntellaRx claim biometric verification stops diversion?

No. There is no US estimate of the share of diversion attributable to identity fraud, so no such claim can be made honestly and we do not make one. What verification does is protect patients from misattributed results, keep monitoring records accurate, and close the informal-courier handoff. See what positive identification is for.

What happens if a patient refuses biometric enrollment?

They receive their medication anyway, by conventional identification, and the record notes that route was used. Making verification a precondition of treatment would turn a patient protection into a barrier, which is the opposite of the point. Our note on consent that means something covers how this is set up.