Nokia Launches Automated Solution to Detect Temperature and Mask Compliance

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20 October 2020

Nokia has announced an automated, zero-touch elevated temperature detection solution designed to help spot potential COVID-19 infections in facilities with thousands of people.

The solution claims to fully automate the process of identifying people with elevated temperatures and confirms mask compliance, in large environments with multiple accesses.

Aiming to reduces the cost of detection and ensure business continuity and supply chain resilience during the pandemic, the solution has been used in Nokia’s factory in Chennai, India. 

Currently, in England, face masks are only mandatory in certain working conditions, and temperature checks remain optional for employers. Whilst face coverings must be worn by retail, leisure and hospitality staff, for other indoor settings, mask-wearing is at the discretion of the employer.

Were the guidance to change, could data collection solutions such as the Nokia Automated Analytics Solution become more common in the UK?

Thermal Scans for Every Person Entering the Site

The Nokia Automated Analytic Solution uses a thermal camera to capture video footage and takes individual temperature readings for every person that enters the screening site. The analytics engine quickly processes the video clip to determine whether the individuals require additional COVID-19 screening, or are not complying with mask-wearing rules. 

If an irregularity is detected, a centralised view is presented and a real-time SMS or email alert is automatically sent to initiate track-and-trace or post-detection actions. 

The entire process takes place in near-real time and the human-less operation enables scaling to very large environments with thousands of people and multiple access points.

Organisations can also expand the solution to support other ongoing use cases to protect employees, site visitors and facilities, including predictive surveillance and machine maintenance, security threats and anomaly detection, and customised industry-specific analytics.

Picture: a photograph showing a manual contactless temperature measure being used

Demand for Automated Data Analytics

Since the pandemic began there has been a demand in the workplace management sector for data-driven solutions for hygiene monitoring. ThisWeekinFM has reported on such products, including a sanitising station that provides data on individual staff usage.

This enables companies to create a predictive model on who will and won’t sanitise during the week ahead. In theory, this could allow employers to use this data to take action to ensure COVID-secure hygiene standards are maintained.

Leo Gergs, Research Analyst at ABI Research feels that this type of automated data solution will only increase in popularity. Speaking about the Nokia Automated Analytics Solution for Access Control, he said:

“The modular architecture allows easy repurposing of the solution to use cases such as port or smart city traffic monitoring and therefore to address the ever-increasing demand for automated data analytics capabilities, which will continue to rise in line with further enterprise digitalization.”

Ensuring Compliance

After successfully deploying the solution at multiple locations, including its own Chennai factory to monitor employee safety, Nokia plans to deploy the solution for enterprise customers across multiple industry segments.

Sudarshan Pitty, Head of the Nokia Chennai Factory, commented: “As the factory reopened to production and over 1,000 employees returned to work, we abided by local regulations for monitoring temperatures and mask usage for every single person entering and leaving the site. 

“The Nokia Automated Analytics Solution has enabled us to ensure regulatory compliance in an automated way, round the clock with zero misses in real-time. This solution has enabled us to boost employee availability by reducing the waiting time in queues and removing the need to assign additional staff to carry out manual checks.”

Picture: a graphic showing a person working at a laptop wearing a mask

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 20 October 2020

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