SCANNING BABIES FINGERPRINTS COULD SAVE LIVES THROUGH VACCINATION
Each year 2.5 million
children die worldwide because they do not receive life-saving vaccinations at
the appropriate time.
Anil Jain, Michigan
State University professor, is developing a fingerprint-based recognition
method to track vaccination schedules for infants and toddlers, which will
increase immunization coverage and save lives.
To increase
coverage, the vaccines must be recorded and tracked. The traditional tracking
method is for parents to keep a paper document. But in developing countries,
keeping track of a baby's vaccine schedule on paper is largely ineffective,
Jain said.
"Paper
documents are easily lost or destroyed," he said. "Our initial study
has shown that fingerprints of infants and toddlers have great potential to
accurately record immunizations. You can lose a paper document, but not your
fingerprints."
Jain and his team
traveled to rural health facilities in Benin, West Africa, to test the new
fingerprint recognition system. They used an optical fingerprint reader to scan
the thumbs and index fingers of babies and toddlers. From this scanned data, a
schedule will be created and become a part of the vaccine registry system.
Once the electronic
registry is in place, health care workers simply re-scan the child's fingers to
view the vaccination schedule. They know who has been vaccinated, for what
diseases and when additional booster shots are needed.
These new electronic
registry systems will help overcome the lack and loss of information, which is
the primary problem in the vaccine delivery system in third world nations, Jain
said.
Collecting
fingerprints from fidgety infants is not easy. Another challenge is their small
fingerprint patterns have low contrast between ridges and valleys.
"The process
can still be improved but we have shown its feasibility," Jain said.
"We will continue to work on refining the fingerprint matching software
and finding the best reader to capture fingerprints of young children, which
will be of immense global value. We also plan to conduct a longitudinal study
to ensure that fingerprints of babies can be successfully matched over
time."
There will be other
benefits in addition to tracking vaccinations, said Mark Thomas, executive
director of VaxTrac, a nonprofit organization supporting Jain's research.
"Solving the
puzzle of fingerprinting young children will have far-reaching implications
beyond health care, including the development of civil registries, government
benefits' tracking and education recordkeeping," Thomas said.
Comments
Post a Comment