Tebogo Tladi

Desire to help families identify unknown deceased bodies and find closure has inspired Bronkhorstspruit Forensic Pathology Service's (FPS) Wilhelm Fouche to come up with digital fingerprint capturing and verification of identity for deceased people innovation.
An Assistant Director: Facility Manager - Fouche who has 15 years experience in Forensic Pathology Service said his innovation is called:  "Digital Fingerprint Capturing and Verification of Identity for Deceased People.''  

Explaining what his innovation aims to achieve Fouche said: "Capturing fingerprints in a scientific manner with an electronic biometric scanner improves the quality of fingerprints submitted.  This produces an accurate outcome when matched against an established database like records in the Department of Home Affairs meaning that families can be traced faster and a reduce the number of pauper burials, wrongful burials and removal of bodies."
Fouche further revealed that the idea to start the project came after he was part of the repatriation team that went and collected the mortal remains in Lagos, Nigeria after the collapse of a church building in 2014. 
"The challenge I observed was that the families had to wait a long time to get closure on the identity of their loved ones. This is also a challenge at Forensic Pathology service where the families wait a long time for DNA or fingerprint verification on bodies that can't be identified by facial identifiers. The management of unclaimed and unidentified bodies at health institutions is also a challenge. The financial impact on insurance companies due to fraudulent insurance claims was also a big driver for this solution,'' he stated.
Assisting the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Solar Biotec in 2018 to test fingerprint capturing device  set Fouche's  concept in motion.  
He then started searching the internet for companies that can assist in biometric fingerprint verification in an effort to speed up the process of identifying unknown bodies.  
''I contacted VerifyID, a company that assists banks in electronic customer verification and bought a scanner out of my own pocket for R2000.  After loading the related data, to my surprise in 2019, I verified prints of a decomposed individual against the information that the family provided and got a report back that the prints of deceased match with the prints at the Department of Home Affairs.  It was the first time in the health sector nationwide this system could be used to identify unknown bodies.  FPS previously used biometric scanners to verify informants in court cases and not the deceased,'' declared a thrilled Fouche.   
According to Fourie, apart from providing families with accurate body verification and closure, the advantages that come with his innovation a include reducing health risk at facilities by releasing unidentified and unclaimed bodies sooner and boosting staff morale on providing a comprehensive service to the public.
A finalist for the 2021 Public Sector Innovation Workshop and Awards Ceremony in the Innovations harnessing Technology (ICT and other Frontier Technologies) category, an accolade that he says he would be more than honoured to  bring back home.