Skip to content
ucsd design lab biometric

Researchers Develop Biometric Tool for Newborn Fingerprinting

Researchers Develop Biometric Tool for Newborn Fingerprinting

Researchers Develop Biometric Tool for Newborn Fingerprinting

Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they have dramatically advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

design lab eli spencer center for health ucsd
Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at
UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Design Lab at Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego.

“We think we’ve solved the problem of infant identification for both developed and developing countries,” said Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. “This new technology allows for quick, accurate fingerprinting that may eliminate the need for paper identification and improve health care and security for millions.”

Globally, infant and childhood identification is needed for health care delivery, especially in remote or resource-limited areas, as well as for supporting efforts in disaster relief, human trafficking, migration and refugee settlement.

Spencer said other technologists have unsuccessfully attempted to extrapolate adult technologies to fingerprinting children. UC San Diego’s solution was to apply a human-centered design and develop the technology from the ground up with infants, caregivers and stakeholders in mind.

“Accurate identification of a child to enable timely vaccinations can improve care, reduce disease burden and save lives,” said Spencer. “This is just the beginning. Consider the usefulness of health identification to track not only vaccinations, but to aid or prevent infectious disease outbreaks. Consider that a person’s identity can now be secured at birth, potentially protecting from identity fraud many years in the future.

“Imagine the ability to assist refugees displaced by war or natural disasters to establish their identity so they can access needed food, aid and care. While a difficult subject, this technology may have applications to help prevent human trafficking and other causes of separation of children from their families.”

Spencer said the technology was conceived to accommodate the size, movements and behaviors of an infant. “Not only did we take into account the child’s physiology and reflexes, but also what would be culturally acceptable in different countries. For example, in some areas, facial photography is shunned, but photography of hands is acceptable.”


Researchers at UC San Diego have advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

The device, called ION, is a non-contact optical scanning technology that can image fingers and the palm of the hand. Prints are stored as encrypted templates that can be securely shared across platforms. The current device is rugged, portable, fits in the user’s hand and works with laptops and mobile platforms. While the technology was developed to identify infants and young children, it works with high accuracy with adults, making it the first biometric platform for all ages. Enhancements under development include the capability to also measure health biometrics and other clinical data, such as temperature, pulse, breathing and oxygen.

Institution Review Board-approved clinical trials are currently underway at UC San Diego and with collaborators in Mexico. Preliminary results show that the device delivers greater than 99 percent accuracy on re-identification after registration as early as two days after birth, with 90 percent accuracy for registration on the first day of birth.

“The next stage is to take the device into the field in Africa and South Asia and broaden the populations we evaluate,” said Spencer. “While the device is not yet commercially available, we hope to have it ready for market within 12 months. We want to continue to validate the platform, work through workflow, security and ethical issues, and, with funding, make the technology available on a staged basis to non-governmental organizations and government programs at local and national levels.”

Initial funding for this project came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Multidisciplinary team members at UC San Diego included doctors, engineers, designers, public health experts and behavioral scientists. Project contributors from UC San Diego include UC San Diego Health, Calit2/Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and The Design Lab.

By: Jackie Carr
The article originally appeared on the UC San Diego Health website

Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they have dramatically advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

design lab eli spencer center for health ucsd
Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at
UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Design Lab at Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego.

“We think we’ve solved the problem of infant identification for both developed and developing countries,” said Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. “This new technology allows for quick, accurate fingerprinting that may eliminate the need for paper identification and improve health care and security for millions.”

Globally, infant and childhood identification is needed for health care delivery, especially in remote or resource-limited areas, as well as for supporting efforts in disaster relief, human trafficking, migration and refugee settlement.

Spencer said other technologists have unsuccessfully attempted to extrapolate adult technologies to fingerprinting children. UC San Diego’s solution was to apply a human-centered design and develop the technology from the ground up with infants, caregivers and stakeholders in mind.

“Accurate identification of a child to enable timely vaccinations can improve care, reduce disease burden and save lives,” said Spencer. “This is just the beginning. Consider the usefulness of health identification to track not only vaccinations, but to aid or prevent infectious disease outbreaks. Consider that a person’s identity can now be secured at birth, potentially protecting from identity fraud many years in the future.

“Imagine the ability to assist refugees displaced by war or natural disasters to establish their identity so they can access needed food, aid and care. While a difficult subject, this technology may have applications to help prevent human trafficking and other causes of separation of children from their families.”

Spencer said the technology was conceived to accommodate the size, movements and behaviors of an infant. “Not only did we take into account the child’s physiology and reflexes, but also what would be culturally acceptable in different countries. For example, in some areas, facial photography is shunned, but photography of hands is acceptable.”


Researchers at UC San Diego have advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

The device, called ION, is a non-contact optical scanning technology that can image fingers and the palm of the hand. Prints are stored as encrypted templates that can be securely shared across platforms. The current device is rugged, portable, fits in the user’s hand and works with laptops and mobile platforms. While the technology was developed to identify infants and young children, it works with high accuracy with adults, making it the first biometric platform for all ages. Enhancements under development include the capability to also measure health biometrics and other clinical data, such as temperature, pulse, breathing and oxygen.

Institution Review Board-approved clinical trials are currently underway at UC San Diego and with collaborators in Mexico. Preliminary results show that the device delivers greater than 99 percent accuracy on re-identification after registration as early as two days after birth, with 90 percent accuracy for registration on the first day of birth.

“The next stage is to take the device into the field in Africa and South Asia and broaden the populations we evaluate,” said Spencer. “While the device is not yet commercially available, we hope to have it ready for market within 12 months. We want to continue to validate the platform, work through workflow, security and ethical issues, and, with funding, make the technology available on a staged basis to non-governmental organizations and government programs at local and national levels.”

Initial funding for this project came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Multidisciplinary team members at UC San Diego included doctors, engineers, designers, public health experts and behavioral scientists. Project contributors from UC San Diego include UC San Diego Health, Calit2/Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and The Design Lab.

By: Jackie Carr
The article originally appeared on the UC San Diego Health website

Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they have dramatically advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

design lab eli spencer center for health ucsd
Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at
UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Design Lab at Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego.

“We think we’ve solved the problem of infant identification for both developed and developing countries,” said Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. “This new technology allows for quick, accurate fingerprinting that may eliminate the need for paper identification and improve health care and security for millions.”

Globally, infant and childhood identification is needed for health care delivery, especially in remote or resource-limited areas, as well as for supporting efforts in disaster relief, human trafficking, migration and refugee settlement.

Spencer said other technologists have unsuccessfully attempted to extrapolate adult technologies to fingerprinting children. UC San Diego’s solution was to apply a human-centered design and develop the technology from the ground up with infants, caregivers and stakeholders in mind.

“Accurate identification of a child to enable timely vaccinations can improve care, reduce disease burden and save lives,” said Spencer. “This is just the beginning. Consider the usefulness of health identification to track not only vaccinations, but to aid or prevent infectious disease outbreaks. Consider that a person’s identity can now be secured at birth, potentially protecting from identity fraud many years in the future.

“Imagine the ability to assist refugees displaced by war or natural disasters to establish their identity so they can access needed food, aid and care. While a difficult subject, this technology may have applications to help prevent human trafficking and other causes of separation of children from their families.”

Spencer said the technology was conceived to accommodate the size, movements and behaviors of an infant. “Not only did we take into account the child’s physiology and reflexes, but also what would be culturally acceptable in different countries. For example, in some areas, facial photography is shunned, but photography of hands is acceptable.”


Researchers at UC San Diego have advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

The device, called ION, is a non-contact optical scanning technology that can image fingers and the palm of the hand. Prints are stored as encrypted templates that can be securely shared across platforms. The current device is rugged, portable, fits in the user’s hand and works with laptops and mobile platforms. While the technology was developed to identify infants and young children, it works with high accuracy with adults, making it the first biometric platform for all ages. Enhancements under development include the capability to also measure health biometrics and other clinical data, such as temperature, pulse, breathing and oxygen.

Institution Review Board-approved clinical trials are currently underway at UC San Diego and with collaborators in Mexico. Preliminary results show that the device delivers greater than 99 percent accuracy on re-identification after registration as early as two days after birth, with 90 percent accuracy for registration on the first day of birth.

“The next stage is to take the device into the field in Africa and South Asia and broaden the populations we evaluate,” said Spencer. “While the device is not yet commercially available, we hope to have it ready for market within 12 months. We want to continue to validate the platform, work through workflow, security and ethical issues, and, with funding, make the technology available on a staged basis to non-governmental organizations and government programs at local and national levels.”

Initial funding for this project came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Multidisciplinary team members at UC San Diego included doctors, engineers, designers, public health experts and behavioral scientists. Project contributors from UC San Diego include UC San Diego Health, Calit2/Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and The Design Lab.

By: Jackie Carr
The article originally appeared on the UC San Diego Health website

Read Next

Building New Bridges: San Diego And Tijuana’s Combined Bid Breaks Down Barriers To Bi-National Cooperation

Building New Bridges: San Diego and Tijuana’s Combined Bid Breaks Down Barriers to Bi-National Cooperation

As dusk hovered over The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park on October 3 at the ‘Welcome Home, Bienvenido a Casa’ event, reflections off the San Diego Bay illuminated an evening of excited anticipation more than five years in the making. Will the San Diego-Tijuana megaregion take home the win in their bid to be the 2024 World Design Capital? Or will it be their competitors, Moscow?

Hosting the event and spearheading the San Diego-Tijuana bid initiative is the interorganizational collaboration of Design Forward Alliance, UC San Diego Design Lab and the Burnham Center for Community Advancement, with the full support of the City of San Diego and City of Tijuana and regional elected officials. This collective was created to amplify San Diego’s capacity as a global leader in human-centered design-driven innovation. The combined communities of art, culture, business, education, civic and design worked together in a multi-year, multi-national collaboration culminating in this night of solidarity for the joint-effort to win the coveted World Design Capital designation—a year-long city promotion program that would begin in 2024 and put the region on the global stage as a world-class innovator of economic, social, cultural and environmental design solutions for a better society.

“It’s not just about gaining the World Design Capital title,” said the Director of The Design Lab, Mai Thi Nguyen. “It’s about how we actually want to contribute and collaborate on multidisciplinary design innovation throughout the region, nationally and globally.”
San Diego -- Tijuana

Can San Diego — Tijuana region be World Design Capital?

Read the San Diego Union Tribune article by columnist Diane Bell about the World Design Capital bid.

San Diego, together with Tijuana, has placed a bid to be designated the 2024 World Design Capital , a selection that will be finalized this October.

A San Diego nonprofit called the Design Forward Alliance was created with the help of numerous community and design groups to coordinate with Tijuana representatives and prepare the bid package.

Michèle Morris, associate director of the UCSD Design Lab and president of the Design Forward Alliance, is very optimistic about this region’s chances for success.

“We do feel confident that we will make the short list,” she says. Morris also is associate director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego, which helped launch the alliance in 2016 following an inaugural Design Forward Summit in downtown San Diego.

Win or lose, Morris notes that the bidding process has strengthened ties and fostered new creative ideas for our region.

Design-A-Thon: Mindshifts on Megafires

During fire season, it has become the norm to see front-page images of apocalyptic wildfires. A century of suppressing wildfires has created a dangerous accumulation of flammable vegetation on landscapes, contributing to megafires that risk human life and property and destroy ecosystems.

The Design-A-Thon brings together UC San Diego students from all disciplines and experience levels in a pitch-style competition to apply the Design Thinking process to proactive solutions to end destructive wildfires. All participants will be invited to present their submissions on April 20 after the Design@Large panel on Climate Risk Reduction and Technology.

Key dates and events:
-April 7 @ 4 PM - Design Challenge unveiled at kickoff
-April 15 - Registration & design-thinking workshop, lightning talks, and mentor sessions
-April 16 @ 11:59 PM - Submissions due
-April 20 @ 5 PM - Project showcase at Design@Large
Design Lab Ucsd Elderly

Design for older people sucks. Here are four ways to fix it

Digital Arts editorial with Stefan Sagmeister and Design Lab Director Don Norman on designing for sixty-somethings.

Beginning in May, Alive Ventures launched a series of ongoing panels titled “Old People are Cool, Design for Them Sucks”, aiming to open up a discussion with the design community on how to better design for older adults. John Zapolski, founder of Alive Ventures, and design thought leader Ayse Birsel of Birsel + Seck, hosted the series of discussions, with guests including design luminaries such as Stefan Sagmeister and Don Norman.

“When I would visit him in retirement homes, I would see people who needed walkers and wouldn’t use them because it was a stigma,” said Norman. “They were so ugly and it sort of shouts out to the world, ‘Hey I’m old and crippled and therefore probably feeble minded as well,’ right? Well no, it’s wrong. And so I noticed that, but I didn’t pay much attention until I myself reached my eighties and started looking at my friends and other things and realised that, yes, people shunned a lot of things that are being made to help them because they don’t like to admit publicly they have problems.” - Don Norman
Mobile Health

Focus on mobile health: Scientists develop app to diagnose, treat leishmaniasis

Photo courtesy of Centro Internacional de Entrenamiento e Investigaciones Medicas

Cutaneous leishmaniasis - caused by bites from infected sandflies - produces skin lesions that leave behind both scars and stigma that last a lifetime. Up to 1.2 million new cases are diagnosed each year across the 90 countries where the disease exists, including Colombia.

“Leishmaniasis happens where the medical system isn't," says Dr. Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, a Fogarty mHealth grantee at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He's been working in rural Colombia to bridge the access gap between remote communities and the public health system, using a mobile tool that empowers community health workers to identify new cases of the disease and monitor treatment.
Uc San Diego Design Lab

Design Lab and MIT Media Lab Join Forces to Organize a Design·a·Hack·a·thon

No hackathon would be complete without cardboard prototypes strewn about the room, laptop screens glowing with code, and the edgy excitement of teams working against the clock. Hackathons concentrate the efforts of talented, highly motivated participants eager to develop new technologies. There is, however, often one key element missing from this picture: the people for whom these technologies might serve. This inspired The Design Lab to ask, “How might we make designing for people the central element of a hackathon?” Answer: we needed to make “design” a central component. Designathons and Design Swarms exist, but they didn’t quite fit our need to combine both designing and doing (hacking) in a very short, highly condensed manner. Eventually we ended up with Design·a·Hack·a·thon.
Back To Top