Veintree Ethical Biometrics

Your hands are your credentials: Veintree encodes palm vein networks like "Human Biometrics QR code", unfalsifiable, application’s specific, non-discriminant, ethical.

In the chaos of a humanitarian crisis, humanitarian organizations lack the visibility they need to deliver life-saving aid effectively. Veintree’s Authentication system gives them a comprehensive understanding of the human impact in real time, thanks to an ethical, reliable authentication process that can be easily scaled up for the “Mission Billion” challenge.

Each humanitarian crisis is unique, impacting individuals, families and
communities in different ways.

Reliable authentication is essential to deliver life-saving aid effectively.

In Bangladesh, we witnessed first-hand the sprawling Rohingyas refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, which is home to nearly a million displaced people… and the fact that the refugee camp is growing, with 60k babies born every year. This is a massive logistical challenge. This isn’t made easier by a culturally-distinct family naming system, and the fact that hardly any of them have identification, and no one has citizenship.

In this context, the humanitarian organizations struggle to have unique healthcare files. Some people get various treatments from multiple healthcare providers … when other nothing adequate. Lack of reliable authentication also means risks and fraud. As a result, it is usually accepted that 30 % of aid money doesn’t get to the people for whom it was intended.

Veintree is a start-up founded by Christophe Bron, a physician with a passion for tropical and humanitarian missions, and a dedicated team of engineers. Veintree provides humanitarian organizations with a simple, ethical and reliable “Authentication as a Service”.

Each human being has a unique vein network in their left and right hands, always available: it’s hard to lose your hands! It can’t be duplicated or falsified like fingerprints or irises.

Veintree scanners map the vein network and code in seconds, producing anonymous and encrypted “human biometrics QR code” that is sent to trusted third party servers. Scanners, server and software are robust (IP68 conditions) and easy to use.

Veintree and its academic partners uses, and continues to test, various proprietary algorithms that transform the data into code.

The procedure is fully GDPR compliant. Our Privacy by Design approach has already been approved by European authorities as Ethical: we don’t need to know name, sex, age, ethnicity of beneficiary, making it fully anonymous.

Our system creates a clear remote data picture of what humanitarian organizations are dealing with, how one can deal with it, and unforeseen circumstances. 

Everyone benefits:

• Organizations have local and remote real-time visibility, reduced fraud, reduced administration costs, reliable reporting.
• Donors have proof that donations are being used for the desired aim.
• Above all, the beneficiaries are ensured basic human rights, simplicity and rapid access to their data and essential services.

We are already working on projects with a humanitarian organization with the aim of authenticating their 17.6 million worldwide volunteers for a census and activity monitoring. We are ready to bring our participation to the “Missing Billion” challenge and prepared to open-source the software under CC license in line with World Bank requirements.

The technology of Infra Red (IR) illumination and video capture is not new by it-self, but our IR video-image interpretation and coding in the sensor are totally new. The fact that no image nor image linked-features are compared either directly or indirectly represents the innovation of our solution. The comparison of the coding on the server side is not a hash comparison as it considers the liveness aspects in the encrypted coding. Never two codes are fully identical. This is new and is based on mathematics.

The sensor is based on RaspberryPi and IR Camera which are both open-source.

Our privacy by design solution is linked with several characteristics: 

• The IR illumination and video coding of the venous network is contactless and non-traceable by nature.

• It is also non-nominative and non-discriminating, as no gender, no age and no ethnicity elements are considered.

• The presentation "pronation-supination" of the hand venous pattern is a deterministic movement not easy to fake and capture under forced circumstances.

• The blood flow in the veins is such that the resulting coding is never strictly identical and the cryptographics tokenization does not provide any direct clues and similar patterns if directly compared.

• The encoding of video frames is done in a frame by frame tempo in the sensor itself and video sequences are immediately destroyed.

• The code is specific for the sensor and the application and is transmitted encrypted with metadata to our server.

• Our application server database contains only codes without any personal data, deciphers and compares with precedent occurrences of a similar code, if any.

• The unique associated serial number with a previously registered homothetical code is transferred to the client server which determines the action to be done and transmits it directly to the authentication server and/or scanner.

Our technology provides no identification but only non-nominative authentication in form of an application specific coding, called a "Veintree code".

Application specific Veintree codes are mathematically designed in such a way that they cannot cross-match between codes for various applications and therefore can be used for application-specific separate databases, without any merging risk nor identification tracing.

Based on these characteristics, a specific Veintree coding can be generated for any digital identification system, linked with an application specific database.  In line with the ID4D guidelines, we intend to offer a coding algorithm producing a so-called Governmental ID Veintree Code in open source form which could be universal.

Application specific coding for insurance, eHealth organizations, banking or any other could be developed on a for-profit basis.

The technology has the potential to suppress the need of smart cards, pin codes or passwords and therefore has a clear business model advantage over any other identification method requesting clerical work.

The Application specific Authentication Server and its API are freely configurable according to the client desires, provided that the Ethical Biometrics regulation and Ethical Biometrics Label are respected.

The interoperability between Veintree and Client server is only based on secured specific serial number field and an inter-server secured (TCP/IP or GSM) one to one exchange procedure.

Yes, open APIs are defined to exchange serial numbers between the authentication server and the client server.

Our scanner communicates with our server by any secured communication protocol, either TCP-IP or any other communication protocol with GSM modem (IPFS protocol)

Our humanitarian environment use-case and communication procedures are covering power and network shortage. Veintree scanners are battery-powered with induction charging.

The coding but not the images sequences is being kept in the sensor until the server acknowledge the controlled transfer.

A reconciliation protocol is implemented which take charge of the temporary serial numbers tagging the actions which are created during the on-going operations in case of communication shortage. See video presentation.

The humanitarian organizations will enter the Digital world and de-materialize their operations. Admin, operational costs and control with Veintree technology are much more competitive than present "paper and email" work.

Many Use-cases will be based on the authentication technology, from Disaster Management and Emergency Response Units, to Community Based Health Insurance.

We believe that Ethical Biometrics Authentication should progressively replace clerical work, chip card and password authentication.

For Identification, based on Generic Open source coding of the venous network pattern, we believe that the Interoperability with MOSIP platform will stimulate quick and a broad-spectrum development of Governmental applications.

We are developing our solution with IDIAP, the Swiss Biometry Institute and EPFL (Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne) as well as with HES-SO electronic school and Icare Institute. We are testing our solutions with IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) and with ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross). We are applying our pilots to IFRC.

Technically, we are developing our own codes and are working with major institutions to elaborate, manage and enhance the scientific background of the Biometrics, the Image treatment, the Deep learning approach and server algorithm aspects, as well as the hardware refinement and miniaturization toward an ASIC.

Commercially, we have developed a business model which is efficient for low-income, low-size humanitarian organizations to reduce their admin cost and enhance their internal control, locally and remotely.

Ethically, we are developing the Ethical Biometrics Label which ascertain that collected data cannot be used for other purposes and reduce data protection risks.

Our Revenue Model is based on the renting of the sensor, the value added by the de-materialization, and on the specific web app development for applications where specific authentication is requested.

We have secured the developments costs of our future products and our commercialization channels are spread worldwide through the Red Cross/Red Crescent societies network. (190 countries)

Other Humanitarian organization have showed their interest in our technology.

The Governmental Identification market greatly extend the scope of the Veintree project.

We will develop other non-humanitarian markets as soon as the ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) will be ready.

The Revenue Model with the ASIC shall evolve while reducing production costs and allowing OEM inclusion in smartphone, devices and computers.

The "Mission Billion" Challenge extends greatly the scope of the Veintree project, which was originally prepared for non governmental authentication without identification, as requested by humanitarian organizations.

The fact that "Identification Algorithms" will be made Open Source, extends the scope of development and allows to benefit from and for the whole community.

Authentication algorithm will be developed in such a way that non Identification will be possible.

AI and deep learning-based solutions always need an initial pilot to collect samples, recording, testing and algorithm refinement.

A step by step process is mandatory from 2000 to 200’000 and further to 2’000’000 individuals.
In eHealth related domain, a lengthy and in-deep proof of concept (POC) is necessary to determine how such a system will perform on the data available within the IFRC organization.
During the whole year 2019, we are presently partnering to test with the International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies in Rohingyas Cox's Bazar camp Bangladesh to overcome this present barrier.