As organizations prepare for the return to the workplace, every commercial establishment must add a new dimension of safety to their operating processes to ensure the collective well-being of both customers and employees, writes Nitesh Bansal, SVP and global head of engineering services, Infosys.
Perceptions of safety have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the globe, with businesses shutting down in nearly every affected country. With time, organizations are beginning to realize that they need to get back to business sooner or later. Every commercial establishment, be it airports, stores, or offices now recognizes the need to add a new dimension of safety to their operating processes to ensure each individual who comes in physical contact with their business is assured of a certain level of security for the collective well-being of both customers and employees.
One can draw parallels with the horrific 9/11 attacks, where it brought permanent changes to air travel protocols that are accepted today without any protest. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to bring similar changes to our collective psyche.
Extensive Screening
To contain the spread of the virus, screening all visitors and employees for symptoms of infection is essential. We can expect to see temperature scanning becoming the norm before a person is allowed entry to any office or commercial establishment. Already, enterprises across the globe are conducting thermal screenings of people to identify the individuals exhibiting an elevated body temperature (EBT).
Unfortunately, most enterprises have adopted a manual process for thermal screening, which has several drawbacks. One, it requires full-time operators to execute the process. The processing time per person is long and can take as much as 5–10 seconds, which could translate into long queues where the density of people is high, for example, at an airport or a large factory. This could also add challenges to maintaining social distancing norms. Manual scanning is subject to human biases and errors in judgment, which could compromise safety. All these factors make manual scanning ineffective and unsustainable.
While screening is essential, and it may even be mandatory, in most instances, the process itself needs to be non-intrusive, fast, and consistent. For example, it is not realistic to expect every visitor to log in their temperature or other physical parameters before they enter a space since this impinges on their right to privacy, nor can they be expected to wait in line for long to complete the scanning process.
Any solution needs to be robust, highly accurate, and comply with government guidelines, and should map with the medical fraternity’s recommendations. Lastly, we must ensure that it does not collect any personally identifiable information (PII).
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Automation as a Solution to Employee Health Screening
Automation is the most appropriate solution to address the challenges in the manual process of employee screening. It isn’t just about capturing thermal images using a camera but making the right decision with every individual being scanned to ensure that the threat identified is accurate. Infosys has developed a solution that takes the feed captured by a thermal camera and processes it with computer vision (CV) and AI algorithms. The camera is connected to an edge device to ensure that the computation takes place on the edge and the results are available in real-time with zero latency. The cloud is used to view only additional algorithms. Computer vision or vision sensing is used to identify critical features within the captured image of the human face – specifically eyes, tear ducts, etc. which are indicative of accurate actual body temperature. This is done without any data being stored that may reveal the identity of the person. Machine learning-based AI models map these temperatures and process them. Lastly, the solution is convenient as it does not require a person to remove any mask that he or she may be wearing.
Learn More: Promoting Workforce Wellness in Unprecedented Circumstances
Once automation is done, the scanning process can be enhanced to include the next steps. For instance, a retail store might suggest customers with high temperatures to opt for alternate shopping routes such as home delivery or placing orders over the internet. An organization might ask employees deemed as risky to work from home.
In the post-COVID world, an organization’s ability to scan people accurately and unobtrusively will play a key role in ensuring that their businesses run smoothly and safely. As we slowly go back to our offices – automation, smart spaces, movement tracking, heat maps, and edge computing will be used extensively to ensure a safe environment.
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