FB pixel

Can biometric wearables capitalize on worries over machine vision for COVID-19 detection?

Can biometric wearables capitalize on worries over machine vision for COVID-19 detection?
 

Just as concerns and skepticism grow about systems using facial recognition as a tool to help spot fevers in a crowd, more medical wearables research and biometric products are coming to light.

Privacy worries have cast a pall over machine vision options, and that could push more investors to wearables. There is a catch, of course. Much if not most of the new wearable technology also poses perceived privacy, security and government-overreach threats.

Indeed, a recent New York Times article spotlights makers of wearable devices who promise to address COVID-19 detection and tracking. The products could also be used to invade one’s privacy, track activities unrelated to the disease or serve up personal data to cybercriminals.

BioIntelliSense, which makes the adhesive-backed BioButton, is supplying devices to Oakland University, in Michigan. They record skin temperatures once a minute (although temperature is now considered an unreliable signal).

Germany-based Kinexon is working with the University of Tennessee with a wearable device that, until the pandemic, had only monitored performance metrics like speed. The new product, called the SafeZone, alerts wearers when they are within six feet of another SafeZone wearer.

According to the Times article, the National Football League requires staff and players to wear the SafeZone.

A pair of research projects also have a COVID-19 profile, too.

A team at the University of Colorado Boulder says it has created a sensor-impregnated film that is stuck onto skin to record body temperature. It is an idea that has been around for some time, but the school is pushing the material’s ability to heal tears in its substrate.

Another team, this one with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, has applied for a patent on a manufacturing process for sandwiching printed circuits within porous and flexible films. The films are actually vat-grown nanocellulose printed-circuit boards with electroless plating of metallic wires.

Med-tech Maxim Integrated Products is making the most of the current need to react rapidly to the changing coronavirus environment. It makes the Health Sensor Platform 3, a wrist wearable monitor that can watch many metrics, including heart rate (which, over time, is a better signal when diagnosing COVID-19).

Maxim says that companies designing products based on its device can “start collecting data immediately, saving at least six months” over similar scratch-built devices.

Article Topics

 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Madagascar considers bids for €8.5M digital ID contract

Madagascar is reportedly in the final stages of selecting a biometrics supplier for a project to modernize the country’s civil…

 

Fraud rings exploit federal weaknesses as Washington falls behind

A new report from identity verification company Socure provides a grim but necessary wake-up call to the federal government: sophisticated…

 

Verifiable Credentials 2.0 now a W3C Standard

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published seven W3C Recommendations, including Verifiable Credentials Data Model…

 

World moves further into Asia with new Thailand manager on heels of US launch

“Like a Rolling Orb” may not have the same ring to it as Bob Dylan’s anthem, but that’s not stopping…

 

Alarming gains in face reconstruction from biometric templates made by researchers

Biometric template security is critical to the data integrity and privacy the industry needs to thrive, and template inversion attacks…

 

UK govt planning £2M facial recognition contract to catch driver’s test cheats

The UK government is planning a tender to contract worth 2 million pounds (approximately US$2.7 million) for facial recognition software…

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Biometric Market Analysis

Most Viewed This Week

Featured Company

Biometrics Insight, Opinion

Digital ID In-Depth

Biometrics White Papers

Biometrics Events