Biometrics Technology in the Disability, Health, and Medical Field

Updated/Revised Date: 2022-04-02
Author: Disabled World | Contact: Disabled World (Disabled-World.com)
Additional References: Biometrics Publications

Synopsis: Information and latest news relating to biometrics, the science and technology of measuring and analyzing biological data in the medical and health area. Health care biometrics refers to biometric applications in doctor's offices, hospitals, or for use in monitoring patients. This can include access control, identification, workforce management or patient record storage. There is also an increasing need to identify patients with a high degree of certainty. Adaptive biometric Systems aim to auto-update the templates or model to the infraclass variation of the operational data. The two-fold advantages of these systems are solving the problem of limited training data and tracking the temporal variations of the input data through adaptation.

Main Document

What is Meant by Biometrics?

Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and analyzing biological data. Biometrics authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify individuals in groups that are under surveillance. In information technology, biometrics refers to technologies that measure and analyze human body characteristics, such as DNA, fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns and hand measurements, for authentication purposes.

The International Standardization Organizations provides the following definitions for biometrics:

Biometric recognition/ biometrics - Automated recognition of individuals based on their biological and behavioral characteristics.
Biometric characteristic/ biometric (deprecated) - Biological and behavioral characteristic of an individual from which distinguishing, repeatable biometric features can be extracted for biometric recognition.

Refer: ISO/IEC 2382-37. Information technology - Vocabulary - Part 37: Biometrics

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Illustration shows a persons left eye being scanned with a biometrics ID scanner.

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The most widely used biometric technology uses fingerprints:

Fingerprint scanners measure the unique, complex swirls on a person's fingertip. They can even accommodate cuts. The swirls are characterized and produced as a template. At least four counties in California, including Los Angeles, use fingerprint technology to reduce welfare fraud. Spain uses it for its social security card, and it's soon to be expanded for use in handing out pension, unemployment and health benefits.

Adaptive biometric Systems aim to auto-update the templates or model to the infraclass variation of the operational data. The two-fold advantages of these systems are solving the problem of limited training data and tracking the temporal variations of the input data through adaptation.

Recently, adaptive biometrics have received a significant attention from the research community. This research direction is expected to gain momentum because of their key promulgated advantages.

First, with an adaptive biometric system, one no longer needs to collect numerous biometric samples during the enrollment process.
Second, it is no longer necessary to re-enroll or retrain the system from the scratch to cope up with the changing environment. This convenience can significantly reduce the cost of maintaining a biometric system.

Despite these advantages, there are several open issues involved with these systems. For misclassification error (false acceptance) by the biometric system, cause adaptation using impostor sample. However, continuous research efforts are directed to resolve the open issues associated to the field of adaptive biometrics.

Biometrics and Security:

The need for effective security, implemented efficiently, is manifest in today's world. Individuals must be identified to allow or prohibit access to secure areas - or to enable them to use a computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), or mobile phone. Biometric signatures, or biometrics, are used to identify individuals by measuring certain unique physical and behavioral characteristics.

Virtually all biometric techniques are implemented using a sensor, to acquire raw biometric data from an individual; feature extraction, to process the acquired data to develop a feature-set that represents the biometric trait; pattern matching, to compare the extracted feature-set against stored templates residing in a database; and decision-making, whereby a user's claimed identity is authenticated or rejected.

The Biometric Consortium serves as a focal point for research, development, testing, evaluation, and application of biometric-based personal identification/verification technology. The Biometric Consortium organizes a premier biometrics conference every fall. Information about past conferences, current government and standards activity, a bulletin board service, and other biometric resources can be found throughout their website at www.biometrics.org

Health and Medical Biometrics Applications

Healthcare biometrics refers to biometric applications in doctor's offices, hospitals, or for use in monitoring patients. This can include access control, identification, workforce management or patient record storage. There is also an increasing need to identify patients with a high degree of certainty. Identity verification solutions based on biometric technology can provide identity assurance and authentication while increasing privacy and security. Health biometrics, personal medical data - which includes digital images and biorhythm recordings - are referred to as medical biometrics.

The future portends a new era in the field of health and medical biometrics. Advances in technology will make biometrics more attractive to healthcare organizations. However, while costs of biometrics technologies are slowly being reduced, they still remain a challenge to a new era of biometrics in health care.

Wireless Brain Sensor

A team of neuro-engineers based at Brown University has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects. Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for more than a year, a first in the brain-computer interface field.

Wireless Brain Sensor has Many Applications - Brown University - (2013-03-01)
https://www.disabled-world.com/assistivedevices/biometrics/neural-sensing.php

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