A wallet-sized card carrying a small microchip could very well reduce the precious, agonizing time it takes to identify children who are hospitalized, and gather their medical background when an emergency occurs.

Jericho resident Mark Basile, who invented KidzKard, believes every parent should acquire one, and hopes no one ever uses one. The push to familiarize the national public with his potentially life-saving product begins now ¬ an effort which, no doubt, will only be helped by the prestigious honor Basile is about to receive in Washington DC.

On April 6, Basile's creation will be placed perennially on display at the Smithsonian Institution's Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology Innovation at the National Museum of History. It will be part of an exhibit that features the world's breakthroughs in, and evolution of, computer technology. This honor comes after KidzKard was named a winner last month at the 10th annual Computerworld Smithsonian Awards. The Jericho product shares winning status this year with 57 other products in the medicine category, and 442 inventions among the contest's 10 categories.

Each year, for the awards, a prestigious panel of judges selects nominated products from across the world. The panel, said awards official Simone Ross, "seeks out and recognizes individual applicants that use computer technology in innovative ways that impact the world."

According to Ross, KidzKard fit the bill. "It's fairly obvious to see why we have it in our collection," Simone added.

Nevertheless, Basile was still taken aback when, on February 23, the Smithsonian revealed the winners. "I was shocked, and still shocked now, because you look at the other applicants in the field, and you have major corporations which have been developing new ways of disseminating and storing information for years, and here's a little Long Island company that started with an idea to help to protect children," said Basile.

But this little Long Island company may soon expand rapidly. It already moved its headquarters once, from Hicksville to Syosset's North Shore Atrium, and Basile says he is now ready to make his mark, and expose his product, nationally.

The Smithsonian exhibit will help do just that, introducing spectators to the quarter-century-year-old technology known as the smart card, a card that carries a microchip which stores information. Furthermore, the KidzKard demonstrates how to apply the smart card in a way that benefits everyone. "This opens the door for people to understand the general uses of the smart card," said Basile, explaining that, up until this point, smart cards never have had any popular uses in America. "Like credit cards, people at first did not want to use it. Now, [credit cards are] the trend."

But Basile doesn't anticipate a reluctance to purchase smart cards, should it mean reducing the time it takes to resolve a life-or-death situation involving one's child. Basile, himself, vividly remembers when, several years ago, he rushed his one-year-old son, Eric, to the hospital, as the child struggled to breathe. His son could not be treated until staff members thoroughly understood his medical history, and Basile did not have that information at his fingertips. His son, who suffers from asthma, recovered, but the fear Basile took from the incident prompted the then-lawyer to form, along with Alan Weinreb and Charles Fishman, the Incredible Card Corporation, so that he could develop KidzKard, as well as its adult version, Lifecard.

Parents who register with ICC for a KidzKard provide the company with information regarding their child's medical background ¬ medication, allergies, previous illnesses, for example ¬ and also provide contact numbers where family members can be reached if an emergency occurs. The parents keep the original programmed card, and their children receive a KidzTag, a smaller version of the card that they can wear or attach to their knapsacks. A hospital worker can insert a sick or hurt child's card into a device called a reader to immediately gain access to vital information. The cards also can aid authorities when dealing with lost children. Numerous safeguards are designed in the system so that unauthorized people cannot gain access to a child's personal information. Kids missing their tag and card can also have their thumbprint scanned to pull up the information.

Long before it was announced as an award winner, KidzKard was nominated for the Smithsonian award by Charles Wang, CEO of Computer Associates, back in October 1997. Wang became familiar with the product after ICC used CA's database product, Jasmine, to store high concentrations of textual and complex data in its system.

Wang may have been impressed with the card itself, but what likely convinced him to nominate the product was his concern for children. "Computer Associates always has had a tremendous commitment to children," said Basile.

"Charles is very much into helping children with charities," said Michelle Morin, PR representative to CA. According to Morin, Wang, along with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has set up a web page designed to reunite abducted or runaway kids with their parents. Also, Wang recently donated $10 million to Operation Smile, an organization that performs plastic surgery on children with facial malformations, so that it could build a train that would travel across China, on which doctors would travel from city to city performing at least one procedure per day.

Though the Smithsonian's recognition broadens KidzKard's horizons beyond Long Island, the truly best way of spreading the technology around is by recruiting more hospitals. Since the KidzKard's availability in December 1996, ICC has provided, free of charge, a reader to more than a half dozen hospitals in or near Long Island, which are currently operable. Syosset's North Shore Hospital has such a reader. In fact, the North Shore LIJ Hospital system is the first chain of hospitals to use the smart card technology to retrieve medical information from patients. Hospitals can also place readers in their ambulances so that a patient can be assessed almost immediately.

Already, said Basile, several thousand people have contacted ICC about obtaining a card since applications became available on December 10. That response alone, he said, was mostly the result of word of mouth. It is scary to think what the demand will be when parents find out about it.

But as for those who do know, and are already using the card now, have any of them, to Basile's knowledge, needed to use KidzKard yet? "Thank God, no," said Basile.

ICC has also begun to make arrangements to provide readers to local amusement parks and shopping malls, and other "places that we feel are common sites where a child may get hurt," said Basile.

A membership to ICC and KidzKard costs $29.95 for the first child and $9.95 for each additional child. Membership must be renewed yearly for $19.95/$9.95.

For more information on KidzKard, such as how to obtain an application, call 682-8000.