Athena Smartcard has completed a milestone delivery for the Italian health ID program. Athena is providing smart cards for Carta Regionale dei Servizi (CRS), the Italian Regional Health Card system.

This year Athena has delivered 15 million smart cards to the Italian CRS for its eHealth and Digital Signature/Authentication and eGovernment card project. This project is being managed by Actalis S.p.A., the Italian Certificate Authority and smart card system provider for government projects. Actalis is repsonsible for supplying qualified digital certificates, the card production, personalization and fulfillment.

The CRS eHealth card’s digital certificates in the smart card OS permit legitimate card holders to have access to health services. The cards aim to reduce fraud and automate local government IT functions. Emergency data stored on the card may be used in other countries in the EU.

It’s expected that by the end of 2013 over 20 million Italian citizens will be using an Athena card for health insurance purposes. This includes all citizens in the Lombardy and Tuscany regions.