“…Single and layered or multimodal (using more than one trait) applications of biometrics may yield major benefits of privacy protection and health data stewardship, patient–provider trust in handling of data, barriers against the cyber‐security threats of health data, and protection against medical identification theft and fraud. To be sure, the assets of biometric technology are numerous, but questions remain concerning biometrics as a friend or foe of privacy (Cavoukian, 1999; Irish Council for Bioethics, 2008; Woodward, 1997), especially in the rapid‐paced, shared environment of electronic health record systems (Jin, Ahn, Hu, Covington, & Zhang, 2010; Zuniga et al., 2010), divergent cultural settings of privacy policies and laws (Liu, 2008), and variations in the technical and legal perception and acceptance of biometrics perception (Elgarah & Falaleeva, 2005; Riley, Buckner, Johnson, & Benyon, 2009; Schimke et al., 2004).…”