The Health Passport Project is the first regional effort in the United States to look at how card technology can bring greater efficiency to the management of public health and the delivery of health care. The impetus for the project was a widely-expressed desire among public and private health care providers in the western United States to harness technology to make information - whether demographic, clinical, or financial - more readily available in a costeffective, secure, and reliable manner. In response, the Western Governors Association established a pioneering partnership among western states, federal agencies, and the private sector to develop an electronic health card that can bridge information gaps that now exist between clinics, hospitals, physicians, and health departments. These information gaps compel providers and programs, which frequently serve a common population and have similar information needs, to spend time and money collecting the same information independently, repetitively, and often times, inaccurately. The Health Passport will provide a near-term bridge for these gaps, and in the longer run will be a strategic access key for critical information resident on the card or in on-line networks. An intensive eleven-month feasibility study found that Health Passport concept is viable - technically, economically, and organizationally. The recommended technology is a smart card with a magnetic stripe on the reverse. The magnetic stripe will enable the card to connect easily to existing systems and card-reading equipment. The smart card will provide portable computing capability and maximum security, and will ensure convergence with financial and retail industry plans for a universal transition to smart cards by the year 2000. It will also operate from common software and industry standards. This approach is expected to bring cost-saving coordination among public and private health care professionals, while placing individuals firmly in control of the information on the card. Field demonstrations are now planned to support more precise cost-benefit analyses and test if an electronic health card will be embraced by doctors, patients, and program staff on the ground in the United States.