A Biometric Attendance Terminal and its Application to Health Programs in India
- Michael Paik ,
- Navkar Samdaria ,
- Aakar Gupta ,
- Julie Weber ,
- Nupur Bhatnagar ,
- Shelly Batra ,
- Manish Bhardwaj ,
- Bill Thies
ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions |
Tracking attendance is a necessity in a variety of contexts in the developing world, encompassing health programs, schools, government offices, and a litany of other milieux. While electronic attendance tracking systems exist and perform their core function well, they are expensive, monolithic and offer little customizability.
In this paper we describe a fingerprint-based biometric attendance system implemented using off-the-shelf components: a netbook computer, a commodity fingerprint reader, and a low-cost mobile phone. The system identifies visitors based only on their fingerprint, and uploads attendance logs to a central location via SMS. Its functionality goes beyond that of existing market offerings while improving modularity, extensibility, and cost of ownership.
We deployed this system in two health programs – supporting tuberculosis patients in New Delhi and sex workers in Bangalore – and logged over 550 users and 4,500 visits over the course of several months. Our experience suggests that the system is usable in real-world contexts, though incentives are needed to sustain usage over time. We reflect on the sociocultural factors surrounding adoption and describe the potential to impact health outcomes in the future.