Researchers at Michigan State are working to replace inaccurate vaccination logs with fingerprinting systems for young children in Africa. Efficiently matching the fingerprints of children with scanning technology with help replace the unreliable paper records to update patient history. While initially intended for vaccination recording, the fingerprint system may help prevent fraud in a host of health-care situations and help match patients with other records in the database.

To compensate for error, Michigan researchers processed the fingerprint images with software and created matches between the children’s index fingers and thumbs. While biometric scanners are often faced with privacy concerns in developed countries, people in developing countries do not object when the benefit is improved vaccinations against the threat of disease. Michigan State University plans to expand their technology to India, where biometric fingerprinting infrastructure for identification already exists nationally.