A lot of hype has been made over the past few years about biometrics. Congressman Honda has been talking about using biometrics in airports as a way to help airport security in a way that is not subject to racial profiling (assuming everyone is scanned.
Most of the colocation facilities that I've seen (ever) have had biometric hand readers. There was also talk about retinal scanners in airports.
Fujitsu, has announced today, that they have deployed contactless Palm Vein Authentication technology based scanners at the University of Tokyo hospital. They scan the vein patterns in a hand, and are contactless, so they don't have to potential health concerns of direct contact authentication such as a finger print scanner.