British startups introduce digital passports to help during coronavirus crisis
VST Enterprises (VSTE) has developed a biometrics-backed digital healthcare passport with VCode to assist with the fight against COVID-19, the company announced.
Dubbed V-COVID, the passport wants to get critical NHS and Health Care trust workers and blue light emergency services back to work faster. The company is already discussing the passport with medical equipment and service providers, and soon hopes to reach an agreement with the NHS, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other health organizations around the world.
VST Enterprises is in talks to partner with medical equipment supplier Prometheus Medical on a joint venture to include VCode and VPlaform technology in its portfolio.
“We are extremely excited to be working with Louis-James Davis and VST Enterprises developing the VCode and VPlatform technology and how it could improve the life-changing medical equipment that Prometheus Medical provides worldwide,” said Kevin Gallagher, Group Chief Executive Officer for Prometheus Medical, in a prepared statement.
VCode and VPlatform operate as a digital passport in a scannable app can be included in existing healthcare apps, but future plans include adding it to COVID-19 testing kits to be used for ongoing monitoring and reporting. Healthcare workers can have the app on their smartphone to show the latest test result. It can be scanned from 2 meters away, the company says.
The digital passport is equipped with military grade encryption and has more than 2.2 Quintillion variations of codes to secure a number of scans performed and user login, time, facial recognition, touch ID, geo-fences and handset brand.
VCode enables secure identification and ID, geo location and geo fencing, asset tracking, authentication and permission-based authorizations.
The same code scanning technology is used in VSTE’s work with the United Nations, as part of their SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Collaboratory program.
“V-COVID is a game changer in rapidly speeding up the process of getting critical care key workers and frontline staff back into the NHS and in our hospitals,” said VST Enterprises founder and CEO Louis-James Davis, in the statement. “As a digital healthcare passport, it will also be a critically important asset in getting our other key workers in the blue light emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance services and the military returning back to operational duties quickly and effectively. At the same time this will also help to alleviate the pressure off the NHS and emergency services.”
VSTE claims the same technology can be used including in tests for Ebola, Sars and Mers, and to confirm information related to underlying health issues, ICE details, medication and PPE authorized to the key worker.
Digital passport reduces onboarding from two months to two minutes with biometrics
Patchwork.Health and Truu have partnered to reduce lag-time caused by ID and qualification checks to help with NHS staff redeployment in critical or understaffed areas with biometrics, writes Business Cloud.
Patchwork.Health’s digital platform is already popular with NHS trusts in the UK and is now freely available for use until the pandemic ends.
The digital staff passport developed by Truu leverages AI and ML biometric algorithms to identify individuals with 99.99 percent accuracy and enables open standards-based enterprise interoperability. It provides continuous, real-time identity, risk adaptive MFA, configurable MFA policy and full lifecycle support, among others.
While onboarding at a new healthcare organization could normally take two months, the passport reduces the time to two minutes by enabling instant validation of staff identity details, PPE training and Fit Test assessments.
“If the UK is to defeat the threat of coronavirus, speed of response is everything – and that’s exactly what we want to support with,” said Dr. Anas Nader, CEO and co-founder of Patchwork.Health, in a prepared statement. “The importance of allowing hospitals to seamlessly call upon a vast network of trained healthcare workers for immediate service cannot be overstated – delays of several days are no longer sustainable and could make a life-changing difference to patients.”
“We have been strengthening our digital platforms and information networks to prepare them to deal with this accelerated demand, and our user-friendly app now gives key healthcare workers the ability to prove who they are instantly, securely and digitally, and means Trusts can recruit the staff they need, wherever they need them in full confidence,” said Dr. Manreet Nijjar, CEO and co-founder of Truu.
Article Topics
biometrics | digital identity | healthcare | identity verification | mobile app | mobile device | UK
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