iProov and Mvine’s COVID-19 passport with biometric privacy protection begins testing

iProov and identity management solutions company Mvine have co-designed a COVID-19 immunity and vaccination passport secured with biometrics, which is now moving into live testing. This follows both companies’ announcement in August of Mvine’s prototype for a privacy-preserving digital passport.

Work by the partners on using biometrics to protect the privacy of health information goes back to last June.

Local Directors of Public Health across the UK will be the first to test the new passport’s capacities, which will enable the different needs of different counties to be met. This means that in areas with varying levels of vaccine rollout, policy can be updated accordingly. The passport does not need extensive new infrastructure, and can be used within the existing framework of the National Health Service (NHS).

iProov’s face biometrics and Genuine Presence Assurance liveness technology enable secure authentication of customers online, linking with Mvine’s test status solution to provide a widely recognized method of registering an individual’s test result or vaccination status without disclosing their identity. The goal of the passport is to help businesses, employees and other areas of society recover from the pandemic more quickly.

“Without the need for an extensive new infrastructure, the Directors of Public Health will learn how our innovation is used to promote public health and protect citizen privacy,” comments Mvine Director Frank Joshi. “Unlike some other digital solutions for Covid-19, this technology reduces the burden on frontline services and cost-effectively assures a secure and safe way to enable the return to work, return to school and return to the kind of life that people want to lead.”

iProov and Mvine secured a £75,000 (roughly US$102,000) investment from Innovate UK, a government body, following a call for ideas in April 2020. The two trials aim to be completed by 31st March 2021.

Article Topics

authentication  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  data protection  |  digital identity  |  identity management  |  iProov  |  privacy  |  research and development