KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) through its innovation arm TM Research & Development (TM R&D) has unveiled its latest state-of-the-art solution to help in early detection of abnormal temperature among crowds.
Early Warning, Alert & Response or “EWAR” is TM R&D’s latest method that is able to measure and detect individuals with abnormal body temperature at crowded areas which is among the initial symptoms to look out for in potential cases of viral diseases such as SARS, Ebola and the current Covid-19.
The innovation with a dual camera (thermal and optical) is able to mass detect abnormal temperatures of approximately 15 individuals per second simultaneously.
The project to develop EWAR kicked off in mid-February 2020 and it was developed on TM R&D’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP), Malaysia’s 1st Open Software Development Platform, which is a robust digital infrastructure that provides a complete eco-system for the creation of new services on the go.
The platform amongst others comprises a data brokerage system, an Application Programming Interface (API) aggregation infrastructure and an end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) platform for rapid service creation. In 2019 alone, more than 27 million API calls have been running on the platform and the number is growing by the day.
Dr. Sharlene Thiagarajah, TM R&D's Chief Executive Officer, said they were excited to unveil their latest innovation “EWAR” and were confident that this solution will greatly help in early detection of high or abnormal temperature in crowds.
“As the solution is non-intrusive, it can easily be deployed in offices, shopping complexes, transportation hubs, universities, schools, tourist attractions, airports, immigration centres, hospitals, in fact almost any location with foot traffic,” she said in a statement today.
Early detection, isolating and treating cases, contact tracing and social distancing measures are crucial to assist in preventing the virus from spreading. By using EWAR, real-time monitoring and early detection can be performed with minimal human intervention so the next necessary measure such as isolation and treatment could be done promptly.
With IoT capabilities from OIP, contact tracing can be successfully achieved as data and information captured on individuals with high fever can be dispersed in real-time to relevant authorities for planning and emergency response purposes. OIP can also communicate with the National Covid-19 response team for early containment.
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), data on age and gender can be captured allowing users to predict the different age and gender trajectories. AI analyses the existing patterns to predict what might happen next in a sequence. EWAR’s dashboard significantly provides live and historical data analysis as well as geolocation alerts for monitoring purposes.
“We believe that the development of this EWAR is timely and it is very suitable to be used in crowded areas, both indoor and outdoors. With its easy implementation, we will be able to greatly assist in curbing infectious viruses such as Covid-19 and ultimately win the battle,” she said.