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Apple partners with academia to develop mobile healthcare biometrics
NEWS/COMMENT ...Continued from page 3 can choose to block the biometric information linked to their Aadhaar card.
healthcare
Apple partners with academia to develop mobile healthcare biometrics
A
pple is partnering with academics to extend the application of ResearchKit for healthcare. ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that allows researchers and developers to create apps for medical research. At the same time, researchers will investigate the sharing of biometric measurements on social media. The University of Southern California (USC) Center for Body Computing (CBC), part of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Medable announced the Biogram app, based on ResearchKit. Biogram extends health metrics, monitoring and research to allow users to embed heart rate data into a photo distributed to social media via a photo-sharing network. Developed using ResearchKit, the Biogram app is intended to help healthcare researchers better understand how publicly sharing biometrics influences personal relationships and experiences in a social community. Biogram will be available free on the App Store and will collect heart data along with other biometric information such as weight and steps taken, directly from HealthKit. The study has the power to capture data on millions of Biogram users, exponentially increasing the number of medical research study participants, which traditionally average under 1,000. Apple is also partnering with three other universities, Duke University, Johns Hopkins, and Oregon Health & Science University, to expand the use of its ResearchKit programme, reports Mobile ID World. Duke and OHSU both aim to take advantage of the iPhone’s imaging capabilities, with OHSU using still images to map out the spread of moles and melanoma, and Duke University in North Carolina, US, using the front-facing camera to apply facial scanning software to iPhone video footage in a study aimed at detecting autism in children. The Johns Hopkins study, meanwhile, aims to use the Apple Watch’s accelerometers to study seizures. 12
Biometric Technology Today
elections
Biometric tech gets the vote in elections worldwide
B
iometric technology is increasingly being applied to support authentication during elections globally. Local reports indicate that biometric tech will be used during ELECTIONS IN /MAN ALTHOUGH THE modality to be used is unclear. Integrated Biometrics, developer of FBIcompliant fingerprint scanners, will be providing more than 13,000 of its Watson Minis fingerprint scanners to help register and enrol eligible voters in Brazil and Brazilian consulate offices
worldwide. The enrolment process will continue throughout 2015 with a goal of being completed by 2017. The fingerprint scanners are part of a biometric kit provided by Akiyama, the exclusive distributor of Integrated Biometrics products in Brazil. Akiyama is a digital identification supplier, providing and developing biometric enrolment, authentication, and recognition solutions for government institutions as well as banking and commercial sector industries. Biometric technology used in election in Kyrgyzstan has come under fire. Radio Free Liberty reports local authorities as commenting that there were ‘procedural shortcomings’ in implementing the country’s new biometric voting registration showing that there is ‘need [for] further work’. People complained they were unable to vote because they had not registered in time to receive their biometric ID cards needed to take part in the election.
COMMENT Biometric technology can be a magic bullet when it comes to meeting identification and authentication challenges in the developing world. Developing economies commonly do not have a robust, established infrastructure for identification and authentication and that can hinder payments for entitlements and access to healthcare. However there are some inspiring examples of how biometric technology can help address these challenges. In Africa, the Adolescent Girls Initiative- Kenya (AGI-Kenya) is to conduct a biometric registration exercise for 3,000 adolescent girls in 60 schools in Wajir County. AllAfrica reports that thousands of Kenyan girls that regularly attend school, as well as their households, are set to benefit Charity UKAid is supporting the exercise, implemented by Save the Children, which uses biometric equipment to read students’ fingerprints to record daily attendance. The biometrics are then used to identify those students who meet the threshold of 80% school attendance and qualify for a cash transfer twice a term. The cash transfer goes to their household head, whose biometric details have also been captured and linked to a bank account to facilitate electronic transfers. In developing countries, the lack of official identity documents such as birth certificates or social security numbers can restrict access to healthcare so a team from Redgate Software, Cambridge, UK-based SQL Server
and .Net tool developer, devoted a week to work on the code for an open source biometric fingerprint system as part of a regular ‘hackweek’, where software developers, testers, UX designers, and project managers spend five days working on inspirational projects. The system is used by SimPrints, a non-profit tech company working with the Gates Foundation and charities like Médecins Sans Frontières to design a low cost biometric scanner that can be deployed in the field. With the scanner, a health worker can swipe a patient’s fingerprint to find and view the correct health records on a mobile device, either online or offline. The SimPrints scanner works with most of the mobile tools used by health workers around the world and has the potential to dramatically improve vaccination coverage, TB monitoring, and maternal healthcare. Solutions such as these meet real and pressing needs in the developing world. In India the government has gone a step further and is well on the way to collecting the biometric and demographic data of all its residents, stored centrally under the Aadhaar scheme, to enable access to entitlements such as healthcare and pensions. However, with one eye on achieving the right balance between privacy and efficacy the industry is watching with interest the fallout from the recent disclosure that a mechanism exists under which a cardholder can choose to block the biometric information linked to his or her Aadhaar card (see news page 3). Tracey Caldwell
November/December 2015
healthcare
Apple partners with academia to develop mobile healthcare biometrics
A
pple is partnering with academics to extend the application of ResearchKit for healthcare. ResearchKit is an open source framework introduced by Apple that allows researchers and developers to create apps for medical research. At the same time, researchers will investigate the sharing of biometric measurements on social media. The University of Southern California (USC) Center for Body Computing (CBC), part of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Medable announced the Biogram app, based on ResearchKit. Biogram extends health metrics, monitoring and research to allow users to embed heart rate data into a photo distributed to social media via a photo-sharing network. Developed using ResearchKit, the Biogram app is intended to help healthcare researchers better understand how publicly sharing biometrics influences personal relationships and experiences in a social community. Biogram will be available free on the App Store and will collect heart data along with other biometric information such as weight and steps taken, directly from HealthKit. The study has the power to capture data on millions of Biogram users, exponentially increasing the number of medical research study participants, which traditionally average under 1,000. Apple is also partnering with three other universities, Duke University, Johns Hopkins, and Oregon Health & Science University, to expand the use of its ResearchKit programme, reports Mobile ID World. Duke and OHSU both aim to take advantage of the iPhone’s imaging capabilities, with OHSU using still images to map out the spread of moles and melanoma, and Duke University in North Carolina, US, using the front-facing camera to apply facial scanning software to iPhone video footage in a study aimed at detecting autism in children. The Johns Hopkins study, meanwhile, aims to use the Apple Watch’s accelerometers to study seizures. 12
Biometric Technology Today
elections
Biometric tech gets the vote in elections worldwide
B
iometric technology is increasingly being applied to support authentication during elections globally. Local reports indicate that biometric tech will be used during ELECTIONS IN /MAN ALTHOUGH THE modality to be used is unclear. Integrated Biometrics, developer of FBIcompliant fingerprint scanners, will be providing more than 13,000 of its Watson Minis fingerprint scanners to help register and enrol eligible voters in Brazil and Brazilian consulate offices
worldwide. The enrolment process will continue throughout 2015 with a goal of being completed by 2017. The fingerprint scanners are part of a biometric kit provided by Akiyama, the exclusive distributor of Integrated Biometrics products in Brazil. Akiyama is a digital identification supplier, providing and developing biometric enrolment, authentication, and recognition solutions for government institutions as well as banking and commercial sector industries. Biometric technology used in election in Kyrgyzstan has come under fire. Radio Free Liberty reports local authorities as commenting that there were ‘procedural shortcomings’ in implementing the country’s new biometric voting registration showing that there is ‘need [for] further work’. People complained they were unable to vote because they had not registered in time to receive their biometric ID cards needed to take part in the election.
COMMENT Biometric technology can be a magic bullet when it comes to meeting identification and authentication challenges in the developing world. Developing economies commonly do not have a robust, established infrastructure for identification and authentication and that can hinder payments for entitlements and access to healthcare. However there are some inspiring examples of how biometric technology can help address these challenges. In Africa, the Adolescent Girls Initiative- Kenya (AGI-Kenya) is to conduct a biometric registration exercise for 3,000 adolescent girls in 60 schools in Wajir County. AllAfrica reports that thousands of Kenyan girls that regularly attend school, as well as their households, are set to benefit Charity UKAid is supporting the exercise, implemented by Save the Children, which uses biometric equipment to read students’ fingerprints to record daily attendance. The biometrics are then used to identify those students who meet the threshold of 80% school attendance and qualify for a cash transfer twice a term. The cash transfer goes to their household head, whose biometric details have also been captured and linked to a bank account to facilitate electronic transfers. In developing countries, the lack of official identity documents such as birth certificates or social security numbers can restrict access to healthcare so a team from Redgate Software, Cambridge, UK-based SQL Server
and .Net tool developer, devoted a week to work on the code for an open source biometric fingerprint system as part of a regular ‘hackweek’, where software developers, testers, UX designers, and project managers spend five days working on inspirational projects. The system is used by SimPrints, a non-profit tech company working with the Gates Foundation and charities like Médecins Sans Frontières to design a low cost biometric scanner that can be deployed in the field. With the scanner, a health worker can swipe a patient’s fingerprint to find and view the correct health records on a mobile device, either online or offline. The SimPrints scanner works with most of the mobile tools used by health workers around the world and has the potential to dramatically improve vaccination coverage, TB monitoring, and maternal healthcare. Solutions such as these meet real and pressing needs in the developing world. In India the government has gone a step further and is well on the way to collecting the biometric and demographic data of all its residents, stored centrally under the Aadhaar scheme, to enable access to entitlements such as healthcare and pensions. However, with one eye on achieving the right balance between privacy and efficacy the industry is watching with interest the fallout from the recent disclosure that a mechanism exists under which a cardholder can choose to block the biometric information linked to his or her Aadhaar card (see news page 3). Tracey Caldwell
November/December 2015