Beautiful story. Not very relative to HN I think, but it's good to see the world throught other points of view, sometimes.
Thanks for this post.
Thanks for this post.
"When he was in hospital without any documents or ID I came up with the idea of medical bracelets for homeless people. I bought about 100 waterproof USB wristbands which can hold important information and I've given away about 60 so far."
There are any number of people made homeless through mental illness. They are often lost in the system when they become critically ill, and such an identifier would help medical professionals to reunite these people with their families.
You'd definitely have people cutting the tattoos off.
Maybe retina scans or something like that?
Something like this needs to be voluntary - we really don’t want to be forcing vulnerable people to start wearing something they don’t want to.
Sticking a usb anything of unknown origin into a most computers is not a good idea tho
I've discussed this very concept multiple times, from multiple angles, with a few organisations.
This issue becomes a real issue of when the person becomes gravely ill, or dies. Most of the time, it's impossible to trace the person's history - contacting next of kin, working out their path until their demise.
This is a real problem to solve.
However, the practical aspects are that this device needs to be non-identifying, and needs also to be non-exploitable by third parties (in particular: police).
Many people without papers are already in a situation that's difficult enough as it is, but this would be made even more difficult by giving police / other authorities a tool to trace, track, and punish.
Likewise, many people in these situations do not WANT to be found, or do not WANT to carry papers.
The conclusion that I had come to would be that these devices are completely encrypted, and provide no form of external data (ID, etc); and a 'read only' industry facing interface would be exposed.
Services, such as hospitals, or indeed police, etc - could lodge requests to a system with this data. The system would register this information, but give nothing back.
The organisation trusted with this information (could be a recognised charity that works with homeless etc) - would be able to, if requested, or required, or at the person's death, be able to access this information.
The end result being, a person holding one of these cards would be able to have a medical history, and be able to build up a map of their lives.
Such things already exist: social security card, etc.
It's a tough problem to crack, once you start to consider the human element.
>anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I think this article counts :)
What makes the entrepreneur different from the homeless person is simply a fighting spirit, but sometimes even those with the spirit give up. I guess the point is, we're all people, and we should all get the same help and respect, whether we're the power-driven entrepreneur or the homeless person who just can't deal with it anymore.
I've been noticing a number of mental health related things on HN. Perhaps it's because these things hit closer to home among this demographic - weather it be personal experience, or that guy we worked with who eventually broke down. For whatever reason these do get voted up here.