Horizon Blue Members To Get Chip Implants

A Northeastern insurer is participating in a program that will make some patients’ medical records a little more than skin deep.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Newark, N.J., will be letting researchers at Hackensack University Medical Center and VeriChip Corp., Delray Beach, Fla., implant “personal health record module” microchips under the skin of some chronically ill plan members.

The chips will give physicians with special readers access to the patients’ medical histories and family contact information, Horizon says.