Here at last is a good reason to keep a USB Flash drive around your neck at all times: it's got your medical history stored on it. That's the idea Swiss company Medistick is touting. It launched its first product today.

So if you're involved in an accident and incapacitated or unconcious, doctors and surgeons will be able to use your Medistick to get a full picture of your medical status.

The Medistick itself is a 64MB Flash drive with auto-run software that will provide any PC-equipped medic with a read-out of your medical details: ailment history, blood type, current medication and so on. The company will supply the software you need to enter said information and store it on the card in five European languages: English, Germanm, French, Italian and Spanish. The records of five people can be kept on one Medistick.

The hardware's guaranteed for two years but Medistick said the data on it will last more than ten years. No data is transferred - or can be copied - to any computer used to read it, the company added.

The Medistick costs £31/€44 including the addition of the one individual's medical data. Adding other folks' information costs £5-20/€7.50-30, depending on the number of extra people you want to include, up to four. You can buy Medisticks from the company's website (http://www.medistick.ch/en/?www.reghardware.co.uk).

The downside is it's a Windows-only product, but Medistick reckons Mac-equipped medics are a suffciently rare breed not to worry about. The company suggests concerned consumers print out their medical details and keep them to hand. Which kind of negates the need to carry a Medistick, we suppose... ®

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