FaceTec Targets Healthcare Fraud with 3D Biometrics

- Common healthcare fraud schemes include billing for services never rendered, "upcoding" by charging for a more expensive service than was provided, and using stolen patient or physician identities to submit false claims. The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association conservatively estimates that 3% of all healthcare spending is lost to fraud, with some government agencies estimating the figure as high as 10%. - FaceTec's system works by taking a short, two-to-three second video selfie to create a 3D "FaceMap." Its AI analyzes over 100 frames from the video to perceive depth and liveness, ensuring the user is physically present and not a 2D photo, mask, or deepfake spoof attempt. This "Liveness Detection" is a critical step before matching the 3D FaceMap to a stored record or a photo ID. - For ongoing authentication, a user's new 3D FaceMap is compared to their enrolled one, achieving a False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 1 in 125 million, a level of accuracy significantly more precise than traditional 2D facial recognition. This high accuracy is crucial for preventing medical record mix-ups and ensuring only authorized personnel access patient data. - The company has a standing $600,000 bounty program to encourage researchers to try and bypass its 3D Liveness detection, demonstrating confidence in its anti-spoofing capabilities. The technology has achieved Level 1 & 2 certification from NIST/NVLAP for Presentation Attack Detection (PAD). - FaceTec operates on a B2B model, providing its software to organizations that run it on their own servers, ensuring that user data is not sent to FaceTec. The company, founded in 2013, has received approximately $5 million in funding. - In Turkey, the healthtech AI sector includes startups like Tiga Healthcare Technologies, which focuses on enhancing healthcare decisions, and SmartAlpha, which develops AI for ultrasound imaging. Other companies like Inofab Health are pioneering digital solutions for managing chronic respiratory conditions. - The application of biometrics in healthcare extends beyond fraud to streamline workflows by replacing passwords for staff, which can reduce the risk of credential leaks and speed up access to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in emergencies. - FaceTec has also developed UR® Codes, which are digitally signed identity data containers. These codes can bind a person's verified biometric identity to a document, which can be used for secure patient matching at the point of care and to prevent entitlement fraud.