Healthcare Nonprofit Piloting Android-Based Biometric Patient Identification

“Element offers a software-based system for Android devices that is designed to capture a subject’s palm or face biometrics using the smartphones’ or tablets’ built-in cameras.”

A nonprofit healthcare organization is seeking to leverage biometric identification technology in the field to identify younger patients who lack official identification.

The organization, Population Services International (PSI), was initially founded in the 1970s with a focus using effective marketing communications to improve reproductive health, but has since expanded into treating a number of endemic health issues across 67 countries, including malaria, HIV, diarrhea, and pneumonia. Now, it has partnered with New York-based biometrics specialist Element with an eye to using its technology to identify the individuals it’s seeking to treat.

Element offers a software-based system for Android devices that is designed to capture a subject’s palm or face biometrics using the smartphones’ or tablets’ built-in cameras. With such devices widely, and often cheaply, available around the world, it’s an approach that appears to line up with PSI’s goals.

PSI says it is already piloting this biometric identification system in partnership with community health workers, and that it’s focus is currently on establishing a framework for the regular identification of adolescent patients in particular. But if the approach proves successful, it could be expanded to many more patients, and could make a real difference in helping to improve healthcare in areas where patients often lack official ID.

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December 12, 2018 – by Alex Perala