The Danish company Sentispec, together with Prevas, has developed the world’s first fully automatic fever screener called ViraHawk
It can measure the temperature of passers-by and identify potential infection spreaders.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a device able to rapidly determine whether one or more people in a crowd had a fever and might therefore be a potential infection spreader,” said Andreas Claudi, CEO of Sentispec, when the Corona pandemic began to hit Denmark in spring 2020.
It was the start of a collaboration with Prevas that developed a prototype that Sentispec would soon start producing. The prototype was ready in June 2020 and ViraHawk was put into production, ready for sale in September.
“That’s development at record speed. In my 20 years in the industry, I have never heard of anyone being able to launch such a complex product within this timeframe. But it was essential because COVID-19 is upon us,” stated Claudi.
ViraHawk works in the same way as video surveillance. It’s built into a box containing a thermal scanner and a face-recognition software camera. When a group of people pass, it rapidly reads their temperatures from a distance of three metres using a thermal sensor and takes a photo of anyone whose temperature is too high.
The image is immediately sent to an employee who can identify the person and check whether they have other symptoms, enabling a process that can identify a potential infection risk.
This protects employees, citizens and companies from the risks associated with high-risk diseases such as COVID-19.
“This is a highly significant product able to save lives. We are convinced that it will be a success worldwide,” explained Møller, president of Prevas in Denmark.
