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The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) biometric registration of card holders is set to begin in the Ashanti Region from July 7. The issuing of biometric identity (ID) cards to subscribers is to help, among other things, tackle the ineffective health care provider authentication, ensure data integrity, and improve linkages between attendance and claim management. The exercise has already started in three regions, Greater-Accra, Central and Eastern, with a total of about 781,000 subscribers registered and issued with biometric cards. Mr Perry Nelson, Director of Management Information Systems (MIS) of the NHIA, announced this at a media briefing in Kumasi. He said the Biometric Membership Solution (BMS) it had developed, allowed for instant issuance of cards at the point of registration or renewal. Added to this, are better data management for policy decision making, efficiency of clients� authentication, effective linkage of facility attendance to the schemes, and cleaning of the membership database to remove duplicate records. Mr Nelson said these would significantly enhance the sustainability of the NHIS. He said the registration was not an event, but a continuous activity, to ensure that all subscribers were captured, adding that, there was no need for people to rush to change their cards. Mr David Frempong, the NHIA Regional Director, explained that those whose cards had expired, and new entrants, were those who needed to register for the new biometric cards.