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Stephen Davis: So the Gates Foundation put out a call, we need an infant biometric; we
need a way to identify babies, which we can associate with a vaccination record.
Jodie McVernon: One of the key challenges in making sure children are vaccinated is
knowing whether they have been vaccinated. How do we keep good records when people will
bury all their papers when they flee the village.
Kathy Horadam: The sort of things you pick in biometrics, which are physical features
that are characteristic of you. In babies they're very hard to identify.
Stephen Davis: We decided to have a look at the footprint and in particular the ball print.
Kathy Horadam: We've got three different sorts of capture. One is by fingerprint scanner,
one is by inkless print and then the other one was a colour photograph.
Stephen Davis: The database consists of fifty three children and they were foot printed
and ball printed at a few days after birth, at two months of age and at six months of
age.
Kathy Horadam: We're trying to find a growth independent way of extracting features, or
find features whose relationships to each other is independent of the growth of the
child in that really rapid growth period.
Stephen Davis: We've made some significant discoveries about the classification system
for ball prints. We think we've made incredible progress; this longitudinal database that
is unique in the world has become a reality, so we're very proud of that.
Jodie McVernon: If we can find a way of capturing those footprints that's doable in the field
that's low tech, that's easily supported. Where a child could come in have their foot
scanned, immunisation record could come up, there's an algorithm that then will say well
I suggest you get theses vaccines now. You know providing that kind of support to workers
in the field would be fantastic as a tool and ultimately that would be our goal.