Cisco helps Simprints take face biometrics open-source

Biometric non-profit organization Simprints has received its latest Global Impact Grant from Cisco that will help make its face biometrics open source.

The company, which uses biometric verification for humanitarian aid distribution, announced in March that it plans to release a full open-source stack for its fingerprint identification technology by the end of this year. The move should make it easier for ministries of health, non-governmental and other organizations to use their tools and reach the people that need help most, according to Simprints CEO Toby Norman.

Simprints plans to continue the open-source drive in facial recognition. Norman says that the grant will be game-changing for the company.

“This new funding enables our team to accelerate the integration of ethical AI into our platforms and supports our move to open source,” he says.

The UK-based company also announced that it will be working on reducing bias in its facial recognition models, including exploring the use of synthetically generated face images as training data. The approach has been hailed as a solution not just for battling bias but also for achieving regulatory compliance for protecting personal data and solving the lack of training data.

Simprints’ solutions have been used in cash and aid distribution programs in Nigeria, Somalia and Kenya. The company is also working with health authorities in Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Bangladesh and India’s state of Rajasthan. Among its projects are an electronic community health information system (eCHIS) in Ethiopia and vaccination drives in Uganda.

According to its 2023 Impact Review, the use of its technology has sped up enrollment time for patients with 80 percent of community health workers saying it was easy to use.

Cisco’s Global Impact Cash Grants are aimed at non-profits and non-governmental organizations working on social problems. The technology conglomerate has been working with Simprints since 2018 as part of a corporate social responsibility program called One Billion Lives. At the time, Simprints was testing mobile phone camera-based facial biometrics as an alternative to their existing fingerprint biometric solution.