To commemorate the smart card industry’s achievements throughout 2011, the Smart Card Alliance has decided to release its first-ever E-Yearbook.

The nearly 70-page e-book discusses the year’s leadership and advancement in the smart card industry and highlights industry achievements. 

BIO-key International announced the results of tests performed on its biometric software and matching algorithm at a hospital over the past three months.

The results, which included 251,447 attempts to use biometrics for login to the testing system, ranked between 99.34% and 100% accuracy with zero false matches. This is a near 100% true accept rate and one staff member that logged in 5,999 in November without a single rejection. 

A project conceived of by researchers from RMIT University that intends to link infant footprint records to vaccination records has received a grant from the Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, a part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to an Asian Scientist article.

The project, which will be piloted in developing countries, has been named Happy Feet and hopes to have the vaccination history of children immediately available through a scan or photograph of one of their feet run through a biometric system that could match the child to a file containing his vaccination history. 

Ortho-tag has announced that it will provide the University of Pittsburgh with Transcutaneous Near Field Communication (TNFC) technology in “smart” medical devices for orthopedic implants.

The TNFC solution involves affixing an NFC-enabled “Orthotag” to a patient’s orthopedic implant, thus enabling surgeons to quickly receive vital information about the implant using an Ortho-tag Touch Probe/Reader. 

MTS Healthcare has partnered with Indigo Identityware to become an authorized reseller of Indigo’s health care identity products.

MTS specializes in providing clinical cloud computing services, and with this partnership, will be able to offer Indigo’s cloud products, clinical EHR integration and backup and disaster recovery. 

Eurosmart announced that more than 6 billion microprocessor based smart secure devices will be shipped in 2011. Double digit growth in the telecom, banking and government segments is set to continue in 2012 thanks to growth in telecom, NFC and banking.

The organization also predicts a growing demand for Internet security applications as well. 

AVT, a developer of biometric technology, announced a partnership with MedBox, a developer of prescription medication vending machines.

The new deal has brought AVT’s fingerpint-based identity verification technology to the medicine dispensing machines from MedBox enabling them to create cabinets that ensure someone is not fraudulently receiving medication while also increasing a pharmacy’s ability to track inventory and increase their accuracy with patient prescriptions.