Development of a touchless biometric identification system powered by Artificial Intelligence to solve identification challenges in developing countries

"The ability to identify individuals accurately and reliably is a fundamental condition for providing essential services such as health, finance, and government services. In developing nations, the lack of reliable identification methods is a major factor that hinders the delivery of such services. According to the World Bank (2017) over 1.1 billion people worldwide (1 in 7 people globally) lack formal identification. More than a third of these people are children, and the problem is particularly prevalent with groups forcibly displaced by unrest and disasters.

Simprints is a tech company from the University of Cambridge that pioneers innovative solutions to this problem by building and deploying biometric identification systems in the harshest environments in the world. During the past few years, Simprints developed an affordable, secure, rugged identification system based on fingerprint scanning that has been commercialised across 10 countries. Using an open source matcher and ISO templates, Simprints has successfully optimised hardware and software to be over 228% more accurate than five industry-leading systems. Working with impact organisations like BRAC, Mercy Corps, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, and the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, Simprints' ability to successfully deal with worn and damaged fingerprints has enabled these organisations to reach in total \>55,000 beneficiaries who are currently ""falling through the cracks"" of service delivery. R&D strategy has placed Simprints among the best positioned organisations in the world to provide ID services in challenging environments.

Strong, resilient and affordable methods of identification are especially needed in developing countries with poor or non-existent infrastructure for data management. In addition, hardware dependency has been identified as a major barrier which could potentially hinder, interrupt or slow down the identification programmes in countries lacking resources, leading to invisibility gaps and problems in the delivery of key services such as health, finance or governmental services. Now the challenge for Simprints is to further facilitate the implementation and use of identification services at scale in developing countries, with a targeted emphasis on emerging markets, to provide an alternative ID system removing the need for hardware biometric scanners.

Building on the deep technological and field experience of Simprints, this project proposes to research, develop, and validate a world-first prototype providing unprecedented levels of resilience, reliability, privacy and interoperability compared to current imaging-based biometric systems."