Local firm makes mass screening feasible for companies

IN this day and age when temperature screening and the filing of contact details when going anywhere is the new norm, it behoves tech players to figure out a smarter way of doing this, especially taking into account the volume of people and the need to input the data in a more hygienic manner.

Consider the fact that the standard operating procedures for companies include thermal screening upon entry, social distancing, good personal hygiene, and making sure that each employee is logged upon entry.

As much as stationing someone at the entrance with a contactless thermometer and a notebook is a solution, this is not really sustainable, considering the notebook would be a point of transmission should even one person be infected with no symptoms, not to mention the amount of time it would take employees to clock in.

Think, for a moment, about larger companies with more than 75 staff (as delineated by the government), and how everyone would have to pass that checkpoint with social distancing enforced, then pick up the same pen and sign in on the notebook over the course of the next year or so. Not a very palatable idea, is it?

Enter the Dpstar group of companies, a local group that has over 30 years of experience in electric heating elements, temperature sensors, process instrumentation, electrical, automation, and control. FocusM got the opportunity to speak (remotely) with Dpstar’s Business and Product Development Director, Ken Lim, who offered his thoughts on this issue that is part of the new normal Malaysians will need to adapt to.

For that matter, Lim believes that the new normal will be here at least until the end of 2021, as guided by the World Health Organisation (WHO), considering the fact that it will take at least 18 months for a vaccine to be developed, tested and deployed to the masses.

Lim also believes that a solution exists for these larger companies in screening their staff.

“For the purposes of temperature screening, thermal scanners can be used to screen mass crowds and high volumes of traffic, requiring less than a second for each person to be screened. Compare this with the hassle of stationing someone with a handheld scanner and manually writing down the data, which would take much longer,” he said.

As such, Dpstar came up with a system combining their expertise in thermal scanning with facial recognition technology to deploy its ThermScan system which, according to Lim, will allow the manufacturing industries to significantly improve output and productivity, as there will be no need for staff to wait in line, with some cases going past 30 minutes before they are allowed entry.

The system also reduces transmission vectors by removing the need for physical contact with biometric thumbprint scanners or ID cards, which would in turn reduce the risk of any individual being exposed to Covid-19, something that’s imperative especially in high-traffic buildings and work premises. This is solved through facial recognition, which matches facial scans to an employee’s data, already pre-recorded within the system.

Lim explains that the system comes built in with a storage card that can take up to 100,000 storage points, essentially able to handle up to 100,000 employees, with the server able to hold millions of records depending on the size of a company’s staff. This data is also encrypted, with measures built into the server itself, with the ability to set access rights for different users.

“Our solution is premised on an automated solution that offices, buildings, plants and companies can implement, so that reliance on security personnel taking these measurements, which is painfully slow, can be eliminated,” said Lim, noting that the information, image, temperature, date, and time of entry of each employee is recorded automatically.

“Costs and the overhead of employing a number of people to do this job can be reduced substantially, not to mention staff and visitors will definitely be much happier without having to wait in long queues,” said Lim. – May 13, 2020

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