The C-Card scheme is designed to make sure under-25s across London can access free condoms at hundreds of locations citywide, from pharmacies and GP surgeries to youth centres and schools. CoreRFID supplies the RFID cards for public health schemes like this one, helping boroughs track take-up and manage the service cost-effectively.
At launch in 2007, there were over 40,000 pregnancies to under-18s across England, and sexually transmitted disease among younger people remained a serious concern. Reducing this needed a coordinated response from schools, health services, social services and other public bodies, improving relationship and sex education alongside easy access to contraception.
Young people register for the scheme through their local authority and are issued a personal C-Card, usable at any of the hundreds of issuing points across London. Details of each transaction are sent to a central database, letting boroughs track usage, manage costs, and compare their own results with others running the same scheme.
“The Pan-London C-Card offers us a great chance to improve take up of free condoms in the capital. CoreRFID has been instrumental in helping us pilot and implement the eventual solution.” – Christine Chapman, Coordinator, Pan London C-Card Project
Choosing RFID over the alternatives
Before settling on RFID, the project trialled barcodes, keyed identification numbers and biometrics based on fingerprints. RFID won out for three reasons: cost (barcode readers were expensive across the number of planned outlets), familiarity (Londoners already knew contactless cards through the Oyster card), and concern that biometrics might put young people off registering at all.
Having settled on RFID, the project needed a supplier able to deliver personalised cards, branded with the C-Card logo and carrying both a barcode and a visible number alongside the RFID chip. CoreRFID supplied the cards and arranged the custom printing.
How the system works
Each C-Card carries a low-frequency RFID chip with no personal data on it. Anonymity was seen as important to encourage take-up, so the card carries only an identifying code, also printed as a barcode and a readable number, letting the card work as a simple identifier even in boroughs that had opted for a barcode approach.
CoreRFID supplies the cards overprinted with the project’s branding and individual identification codes, alongside a file of all the code numbers, fed into the scheme’s central, secure database. As young people register, their data is linked to their card number. Each time they collect condoms, the transaction is logged centrally, letting boroughs generate anonymised reports and compare results without any way of identifying the individual.
With so many issuing points across the city, the project also needed a low-cost way to read the cards that would work with a wide range of different organisations’ computer systems. CoreRFID’s answer was a simple, compact, low-frequency reader that plugs directly into a PC or laptop’s USB port and appears to the connected computer as a standard keyboard device, making it simple for any issuing point to start collecting data without specialist software.
A system that’s kept growing
Following the continued success of the C-Card, the same system has since been rolled out to manage a new vitamin card scheme.
Ask us about RFID cards for public health schemes
Find out more about the C Card scheme at the Come Correct web site.