Iris recognition to help people with no ID cards access medical services

Department director-general Dr Tharet Krutnairawiwong said on Monday that the humanitarian project to establish an online recognition network of transborder people and those who have no legal status in the country, which was started last year, went a step further with iris recognition.

The project is a cooperative venture between the department, the Thai Red Cross and the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Nectec).

In the initial stage, the project used only facial recognition technology but this year iris recognition was added to increase accuracy, Tharet said.

The project is aimed at allowing homeless people and ethnic minorities who have no ID cards or who are stateless to receive medical services on humanitarian reasons. The project also covers immigration workers, who have entered Thailand without legal identification documents.

Tharet said the project is also aimed at keeping records of these people so that vaccines would be administered to them properly when a pandemic occurs, thus also preventing the spread of diseases.

In the pilot phase, the department and its partners would use iris and face recognition technologies to scan and keep records of transborder and stateless people in Samut Sakhon, Chonburi, Tak and Prachuap Khiri Khan provinces, Tharet added.

He expressed confidence that the recognition technology would reduce repetition of registration of such people and would allow the authorities to precisely identify them to provide needed medical services.

After the first phase is successful, it would be expanded to cover other provinces, he said.

Tej Bunnag, secretary-general of the Thai Red Cross Society, said about 2.7 million workers from neighbouring countries are registered in Thailand with proper documents.

But many more, especially those living along the borders, have been living in the kingdom without legal status. These people needed to be identified with medical records for receiving medical services, he said.

Tej said the system is called Thai Red Cross Biometric Authentication System or TRCBAS.

Apart from supporting the development of TRCBAS, the Thai Red Cross also provides 130 sets of cameras for facial and iris recognitions to the department to use in the five pilot provinces, Tej added.

Nectec director Chai Wutiwiwatchai said the centre was ready to support the development of the TRCBAS with artificial intelligence expertise.

Since October last year, Nectec and partners have carried out facial scans of some 8,000 stateless or illegal immigrants in a trial project.

After iris recognition was added to the system, the TRCBAS system was tried at a refugee camp in Ratchaburi province and the accuracy rate was 97%. Nectec aimed to increase the accuracy rate to 99% within this quarter, he added.