Biometrics and body temperature scanning technologies support COVID-19 recovery efforts

Whoop fitness straps are being used in a COVID-19 vaccine trial, while biometric facial recognition and body temperature scanning solutions have been launched by NEC XON, Uniview and TempuCheck to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as business reopen.

Wearable maker Whoop and Abu Dhabi-based G42 Healthcare have partnered to offer biometric health monitoring to volunteers participating in the world’s first Phase 3 trial of an inactivated COVID-19 vaccine.

Whoop says it’s Strap 3.0 fitness tracker is the first wearable to be used in Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trials.

The partnership is part of the company’s Whoop4Humanity initiative, and allows volunteers joining clinical trials at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi and Al Qarain Center in Sharjah can enhance their participation with daily heart rate, respiratory rate, heart rate variability, sleep performance, and other data.

“The continuous biometric monitoring offered by WHOOP will help volunteers evaluate any changes to their health and help researchers vastly increase their understanding of the vaccine’s impact,” states Whoop Founder and CEO Will Ahmed. “This partnership represents the future of healthcare: using continuous monitoring and artificial intelligence to better understand the effect of drugs, vaccines, and other treatments.”

The trials began on July 16, and are expected to last between six and twelve months.

“We believe that giving volunteers an opportunity to use the WHOOP Strap 3.0 wearable device will reinforce their confidence in the trial by giving them the ability to check on several daily health data points,” says G42 Healthcare CE Ashish Koshy. “This will complement the world-class clinical expertise that the healthcare professionals in the UAE are providing to the volunteers and ensure their safety and well-being throughout the trials process.”

Whoop has also appointed Tricia Gugler as its chief financial officer. Gugler says in a Linkedin post that the company has a sustainable business model and is at an inflection point, based on offering its hardware for free and charging a monthly service fee.

Biometric body temperature scanning solutions launched by NEC XON, Uniview and TempuCheck

NEC XON has implemented the NEC NeoFace Watch biometric facial recognition platform with its workplace monitoring solutions, along with thermal cameras for body temperature scanning, to support COVID-19 workplace health and safety policies.

The solution provides automated employee and visitor identification, with or without masks, for compliant access control and contact tracing. It also automatically sends a digital COVID-19 questionnaire to the mobile phone of the person requesting access, and stores their answers in a database.

“Employee and visitor safety is a priority for many organisations now, particularly at this time,” says Eugene le Roux, chief executive for Africa at NEC XON. “It’s now law under the Disaster Management Act to wear a mask at all times when in a public place, such as an office building, as well as to manage the numbers of employees and visitors on the premises at any given time. This solution was designed to automate that process with the necessary alerts sent directly to the company’s pandemic management and response team so that we are always informed and can act immediately and from an informed basis should we need to.”

NEC XON can also provide mask and social distancing detection and people counting to ensure compliance with policies by people once they have entered the building.

Uniview has donated temperature screening products to multiple government departments, as well as an embassy, a university and other facilities in Malaysia to help the reopening of the country’s economy.

The OET-213H-BTS1+EP-S31-W is the flagship product in Uniview’s UNV Heat-Tracker Body Temperature Screening Solution & Products series, and provides biometric facial recognition, body temperature scanning accurate within 0.3 degrees Celsius in only 0.2 seconds, and compatibility with existing access control systems, according to the announcement.

The product will be deployed to entrances, where it will sound an alarm if a symptomatic individual is detected. Information gathered by the system is uploaded to a centralized platform for real-time management, the company says.

TempuCheck has launched a contactless body temperature scanning kiosk with facial recognition, which it says is an affordable solution for busy locations.

Two kiosk models are offered, performing accurate body temperature measurement within three seconds and sounding an alarm if a high temperature is detected.

The kiosk can be deployed to the lobbies, hallways, and high traffic areas at businesses, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings, the company says, and be integrated with access control systems.

Article Topics

access control  |  biometric data  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  fever detection  |  NEC XON  |  temperature monitoring  |  wearables  |  Whoop