As society adapts to its new realities, both during and following the current public health crisis, innovative technological approaches to the issue of workplace and public confidence and safety will become increasingly important. Hikvision’s Temperature Screening Thermal Solutions Guide details an innovation approach to the issue and it’s one that’s being deployed right now.
Hikvision’s is a thermal imaging-based system designed for the rapid, contact-free preliminary detection of elevated skin surface temperatures. Using thermal and conventional lenses and sensors, it provides automatic alerts when anyone passing the camera exhibits a temperature in excess of a pre-configured range, allowing them to be clinically measured and assessed in an appropriate environment.
The accuracy of the camera standalone system is ±0.5°C. However, the system can be enhanced with a blackbody calibrator to increase the accuracy to ±0.3°C and is capable of screening multiple people simultaneously. It employs Artificial Intelligence in order to minimise false alarms caused by heat from other sources, and comes in a variety of formats, including turret and bullet-style cameras, a handheld version and a metal detector door with integrated thermal camera.
Hikvision’s temperature screening systems are already being used across a wide range of industries, including hospitals, enterprise head offices, construction sites, Government buildings, meat processing plants, nursing homes, food and drug distribution centres, construction sites and retail stores. In many cases, their use has formed a significant part of the host organisation’s strategy for returning employees to work. Before any organisation makes a decision about implementing this screening technology, it’s worth being clear about what it can and cannot do.
Thermal screening cameras can detect surface skin temperature on a non-contact basis (thereby reducing risk), indicate if that detected temperature falls outside of the pre-configured range (and so providing a first line of screening for a facility), screen a high volume of people in a short timeframe and also provide an audit trail of steps taken to assist with health, safety and welfare compliance. Thermal screening cameras cannot detect Coronavirus or detect a fever.
These are not medical devices. Rather, they provide preliminary screening in order to offer reassurance and confidence for those entering a facility, with the risk for screening staff minimised due to the non-contact nature of the system.
Once a decision has been made to implement a temperature screening solution, a number of factors should be taken into account, among them company approvals, set-up and management guidance, communications to staff (and, if necessary, the wider public) and a data protection assessment. End users should also consider the completion of consent forms for staff and a policy for screening visitors to the facility.
Who will monitor the screening? Will they need special conflict management training? Will visitors be asked to leave or to undergo further clinical screening? Will a specific facility be required for this further screening or for personnel feeling unwell?
