Joshua has a chip the size of a grain of rice placed under his skin near his collarbone. It contains his medical data and he can use it to measure his body temperature. Only the place where it all happens is a bit unexpected: tattoo shop The Tattooist in Tilburg.
The medical chip is inserted three centimeters under the skin via a needle. The Tattooist in Tilburg is the first place in our country where you can have such a chip placed. The chip itself comes from Sweden, where this new technique is already much better known and much more accepted.
Brigitte van Gestel, owner of the tattoo shop: “Suppose you get into an accident and you can’t talk yourself. Then the ambulance staff immediately knows your blood group and whether or not you want to be resuscitated after scanning the chip. And they see who to call.” But for that it is of course first necessary that the chip becomes more established here as well.
Joshua Guarnizo Zawata is in the chair to get one: “It’s exciting. It’s new. Not many people do this. I dive regularly and it’s useful to be able to monitor your body temperature. I also do a lot of sport and that’s what it’s useful for.” He can read the data with an app on his phone.
“It doesn’t feel any different from the corona shot.”
When the syringe is placed in Joshua’s upper body, he squeezes his eyes shut but does not flinch. In a few seconds it is done and he has his chip. “That went really fast,” he responds: “It feels normal. I’m not bothered by anything. It is no different from the corona shot.”
Subcutaneous chips are not entirely new. Brigitte proudly announced last year at Omroep Brabant that you could have a payment chip installed with her. With this you can pay at the cash register by holding your hand against the ATM.
But then she got mostly negative reactions. Some customers turned their backs on her and Christians hit her with Bible texts: Revelation 13, verse 16. It is about a devilish sign that people had placed in order to be able to sell and pay, just like with the payment chip. “I think it’s fear of the unknown. With the corona vaccination it was also said that it would secretly contain chips.”
“The elderly now come with questions and they want to know how it works.”
Still, Brigitte is not put off by it: “I like to show that it is not dangerous.”
And Brigitte gets much better responses to the medical chip, especially from the elderly: “They have more ailments, this really helps them. They now come up with questions: ‘How about that?’ They want to know how it works. But when I talked about the payment chip, they said: ‘Oh no, not for me!’”
READ ALSO: Paying with a chip in your hand: a national first for a tattoo shop in Tilburg