The famous Apple iPhone catchphrase; ‘there’s an app for that too’, has spanned its already considerable horizon even further afield. Recently released is an application which allows doctors to take photos of whiplash accident compensation victims which can subsequently be uploaded to a medical report database to confirm identity. Dr David Pearce, who is the Chief Technology Officer at the Information Systems Assurance and Advisory Services (iSaaS) stated that an increasing amount of pressure is being applied to doctors to make the appropriate identification checks in order to prove that the person that they are examining is in fact the person making the whiplash injury compensation claim. He stated that a pilot of the application had already demonstrated that three individuals examined by doctors in whiplash injury cases we are in fact stand-ins and not the real claimants.

Dr Pearce stated that “The claims management company or, in my case, the driver of the car, brought along a stand-in”. The person making the whiplash injury claim had not done anything wrong, but some claims management companies are unscrupulous in their practice. They stated that insurance companies harbour rising concerns surrounding the issue of stand-ins who are often thoroughly primed on how to convincingly fake an examination in order to make a stronger case for a whiplash claim.

The new technology works by allowing doctors to use the iPhone to take a photograph of the person and uploaded it onto the database. The photograph would be passed through a secure server and be uploaded into the cloud. When it’s finished, medical reports and the photographic ID will be merged together. The picture will contain information such as the date and time taken and also a GPS stamp stating the location in which it was taken. It’s common for a claimant to leave proof of identification such as passport or driving license at home, but even this evidence can be unsatisfactory for the situation of making a whiplash claim. The new system should provide a reliable way to positively ID all whiplash cases. The software will be available as a free accessory to the report-writing software known as Corex.