Biometrics application for newborns safe identification in neonatal intensive care units

Biometrics researchers have been recently showed interest in solving the problems of univocal identification of newborns, in order to avoid situations like loss of informations or, especially, cradle swapping . The latter is, nowadays, one of the most concerning issues affecting the hospital’s neonatal unit. Moreover, identification of newborns is one of the main tasks of the medical team in the newborn section. Several approaches dealing with biometric identification in medical field have been proposed, up to now; in this paper we propose a novel smartphone application that, basing on some ear physiological features, allows a fast and reliable recognition of the newborn previously enrolled. Although further tests are needed, the obtained results are already reassuring enough to deeply support the idea that this ear-based application can become the solution to the cradle swapping problem