HOW USCANN ENABLED A SOLUTION PROVIDER FOR TRANSPORTATION FARE COLLECTION SYSTEMS TO REOPEN OPERATIONS WITH AUTOMATED COVID-19 SCREENINGS
A Resumption of Operations Case Study
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Customer
This customer of ours is a leading provider of solution-based fare collection systems to impact rider experience across several modes of transportation. Impressed with our safe and automated temperature screening system during the pandemic, they approached DataChip, seeking an accurate and high-quality process for their business to ensure the safety of employees and visitors alike.
Business Owner
Our customer, as a leading provider of fare management solutions for transit agencies, turned to DataChip, to establish a faster, more accurate temperature screening process to ensure the highest safety for their premises. This was to help them to resume operations and enable their visitors and employees to come into their workplace without any fear.
Problem Statement
- Their goal was to reduce inefficiencies in manual screening
- Reduce the cost per administrator at each entry which was about $400 per day at two separate entry points
- Time taken during manual screening was over a minute per person
- Made their visitors and employees uncomfortable waiting in a crowded area
Our customer was in urgent need of an easy-to-install and cost-effective temperature monitoring and testing solution to replace their invasive, inconvenient, time-consuming and expensive safety measures for all their visitors and employees.
Business Outcomes
DataChip’s uScann is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Driven Smart Temperature Scanner, designed for autonomy. It is automated and doesn’t require human contact or supervision to work. The state-of-the-art AI monitoring system looks for optimal situations each microsecond to ensure the highest quality temperature results.
- Installed D-I-Y auto scanner device at both their entrances
- Automatic email alert notification to the main security administrator for any out of range temperatures recorded
- Alert displayed on the device when temperature was out of range for any person
- Reports provided for the denial of entry for those who triggered any exceptions due to the COVID-19 questionnaire responses and for those who were denied entry at the gate
- Linked the gate security system to the live temperature feed for opening the door when there is no exception on predefined temperature threshold
Business Drivers
- Reopen office premises safely and ensure that visitors and employees are safe
- Ensure safety without spending large amounts and maintaining the highest standards
- Install an easy-to-use and cost-effective temperature monitoring solution
Project:
uScann is the new normal in a post-COVID-19 world, being a smart thermal monitoring platform. It uses complex algorithms based on a variety of environmental factors like ambient temperature, facial recognition, mask detection, obstructions, distance etc., on top of thermal scanner reading. Unlike other products in the market, uScann doesn’t simply rely on thermal scanner reading which proves to be unreliable when environmental conditions change. To illustrate, body temperature of a healthy person varies during the day by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F). Temperatures tend to be lower in the morning and but higher in the late afternoon and evening.
uScann screens each person in about 2 seconds and can screen everyone in a short time.
- uScann offers advanced facial recognition, even when wearing a mask, it helps to track the individuals in the premises, once scanned
- Can flag anyone with irregular, high temperature from within a distance of around 60 – 90 centimeters
- Collates all the information from all connected uScann devices, placed at other entry points to perform a headcount if needed
We customized uScann AI scanners for our customer and quickly personalized the system to their needs. They were able to deploy the scanners and integrate COVID-19 screening using temperature scanning at both the entrances to their premises.
Business Outcomes
Visitors representing major transit companies who visited their premises were quite impressed with the simple, efficient, and quick screening at the entrance using the uScann thermal scanning system. Employees coming into office were also happy to avoid being manually screened by a person holding an infrared thermometer, while everyone queued up in a line. None of them had to worry about being too close to another person, who may be waiting along with them in the same space and may later get flagged as running a fever. Instead they walked in to find themselves facing a no-contact scanner, which screened them and ushered them through in a span of around two seconds and didn’t need them wait for any length of time or made them stand close to any other human being.
THE RESULTS
An immediate of almost 90% increase in efficiency and elimination of daily screening expenses, surpassing all expectations! Our customer has saved on the costs of screening administrators by completely eliminating the need for them. This helped to reduce their daily screening costs to virtually $0. In addition, they enjoyed the following benefits:
- Enhanced safety, security and convenience for visitors and improved workplace experience
- Increased employee attendance by 23% as the grapevine carried the word around
- Temperature time screening per individual reduced to just around 2 seconds from around 45 seconds
- No additional staff were needed to manage or supervise the overall screening process with uScann’s automated screening and secure data collection on the cloud
- Unlike before, the management of customer entity has complete oversight and can collect tons of information about the movement of people and the utilization of workspaces to continue improving their efficiency in space utilization as well as safety processes
uScann pays for itself within a few days, while offering a number of additional benefits.
Qualitative
- Smart Temperature Monitoring Platform to screen employees and visitors
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven Thermal Scanner, Enterprise Ready and scalable
- Lightweight, Portable with DIY installation in minutes
- Easy to use management portal with customizable uScann APIs
- User and location-based security
- Multi-device configuration push
- Customized HR workflows with company specific content, company branding
- More than just a simple temperature reading device
- Open, cloud native and extensible architecture with uScann add-ons
- Automatic alarm for subjects with high temperature threshold
- A variety of alerts including on-screen notification, voice alert, alarm and email alerts
- Integrate with our webhooks technology to perform custom post-event activities
- Offers advanced reporting and analytics from a corporate perspective
- Provides granular data by a specific location or group of locations
- Access to historical data for future contact tracing or compliance needs
- Deploy one device or multiple devices to keep up with the employee or visitor volume
- Add-on features such as People Counting, Protective Wear Checks, Restricted Area Checks, Visitor Management, Employee Attendance Management and more
Enables easy integration with existing systems and provides custom workflows which can be implemented with minimal planning.
Benefits
- Contactless scans eliminate health risks with our contact-free, non-invasive, automated temperature checks unlike handheld manual temperature screenings
- No more stress and discomfort as screenings are ultrafast and take about 2 seconds unlike the time taken for manual screening where people wait around at a crowded entry point, with each screening taking up to 45 seconds
- Provides a great entry experience to employees and guests without any human intervention while making them feel safe
- Scalable and connected devices make it easy to scan thousands of shift-based employees
- Saved on costs of $400 per day or more for temperature screening to administer the entry on a single gate through an outsourced resource
- Measure temperatures with an accuracy around 0.5 degrees