American Health Information Management Association. Position statement. Issue: patient cards

In its simplest form, a patient card is a credit card sized record made of paper or plastic that contains identification information. A card may contain additional information, such as insurance or limited health information. Of the many technologies available, chip cards and optical cards are best suited for use in healthcare. If their expense can be justified and nation-wide standards established, cards could help improve timely access to basic health information such as demographic, insurance, and basic medical information needed for emergency treatment. Technology may permit a patient's entire longitudinal (lifetime) health history to be maintained on a card, but this should not be the only source of the longitudinal record. To assure its accessibility to legitimate users throughout the healthcare system, the longitudinal health record must be a computer-based patient record maintained on a controlled access network.

Published by Journal of AHIMA, 1993. The guideline itself is at the source linked here.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10130019/