Biometric verification of maternity and identity switch prevention in maternity wards

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to noninvasive biometric maternity verification and baby-switching prevention in maternity wards based on dual biometric fingerprint scanner. The proposed system is expected to solve issues that have occurred in many countries regarding stealing or mixing the identities of newborn babies. The solution is based on a device that acquires biometric samples from the mother and her newborn baby right after birth and generates the unique reference of the pair. The same device is used to verify the bound of biometric samples before the mother and the baby are allowed to leave the maternity ward. The privacy of stored templates is provided by cancelable biometrics while the auxiliary data are secured with strong cryptographic protection. The main contribution of the proposed approach is a very high level of proof of maternity for each newborn baby, as well as, the prevention of replacing identities of newborn babies in maternity wards, with a system that can be realized via low cost hardware.