“We are seeing digital transformation being realised at an accelerated pace,” – says Andrzej Lodziana, IT Architect, Netology, in an interview with BrandsIT.
Przemysław Kucharzewski, BrandsIT: The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has put the whole world in a completely new situation. We have to honestly admit that as a society we were not prepared for it. What does this look like in the IT industry? How are companies in the technology sector currently coping?
Andrzej Łodziana, IT Architect, Netology: It’s true that the coronavirus pandemic was a new situation for everyone, which literally and figuratively brought the world we knew before to a halt. We had to change priorities in our personal and professional lives quickly, virtually overnight, and this led to changes in the way we worked. The changes on a formal, legal and organisational level forced us to look for solutions to maintain continuity in communication, information exchange, but also to adapt production capacity to current demand and minimise the risk of potential downtime due to the pandemic.
Let’s go back for a moment to the situation before December 2019, when life was going on as normal. Few thought about the consequences of contracting the virus from another person, much less did large production facilities, factories, business at large, take this into account. Suddenly, everything changed by 180 degrees and the risk of jeopardising the continuity of business operations due to infection of a significant part of the workforce definitely increased. This prompted a search for salvation, including through the use of new technologies.
Thus, IT companies now faced new challenges for their customers. At net-o-logy, we have noticed that new challenges mean an increased search for new solutions. For example, over the past few years we have been gathering experience in the area of data analytics. It turned out that advanced technology is applicable in the era of COVID-19. The GANZ Thermometer system is proving itself for the so-called screening of persons. Combining image analytics with automatic temperature measurement can help minimise the risk of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
BrandsIT: Let’s pause for a moment on technologies that could prove themselves just today in the fight against coronavirus. Can you say more about the GANZ Thermometer system?
Andrzej Łodziana: The GANZ Thermometer is a system that was developed a few years ago and has been successfully used in many countries as a temperature verification tool in kindergartens (here’s an interesting fact – the camera resembles a Panda so that children can become more familiar with it). In these troubled times of the coronavirus, it turned out that the GANZ Thermometer could also be used in other places.
The GANZ Thermometer system is a combination of different technologies and provides a robust solution to serve people and make their lives easier. It enables very fast, non-contact and precise temperature measurement in multiple people simultaneously. The detection of a feverish state in any of the scanned persons immediately activates an automatic alert for the operator, indicating precisely the feverish person.
Imagine an analogous situation in a production plant, where a large number of people arrive at the entrance at the beginning of each shift and only a manual thermometer is available. Checking the temperature of each employee seems unfeasible. The GANZ Thermometer system comes to the rescue, and it is worth remembering that it will prove its worth not only during a coronavirus pandemic.
The added value of the tool is that it can minimise the number of people on sick leave, as we prevent the spread of disease among employees. This benefits not only the employer, but also society. The implementation of the GANZ Thermometer also shows that the organisation cares about the safety of its employees and provides them with a comfortable working environment.
We are currently in the process of implementing the first contracts using the GANZ Thermometer system, which will certainly bring tangible results for customers in the coming weeks.
BrandsIT: How does the GANZ Thermometer system work?
Andrzej Lodziana: The system consists of a bispectral camera and uses a synthesis of video analytics and thermal imaging. As a result, each person (or more precisely their face) appearing in the camera’s field of view is precisely ‘targeted’ and tracked as a target for temperature measurement. The thermal imaging module then measures the temperature of the tracked target, relating the measurement result to a so-called standard, i.e. a constant reference temperature generator, also located in the detector’s field of view.
This solution guarantees very high accuracy and repeatability of measurement results. The system’s functionality is complemented by the automatic detection of feverish persons on the basis of predefined thresholds of the so-called normal temperature. Alarm notifications can take place in various forms, such as a message on the screen, notification sent to a mobile application, or activation of other systems (such as door lock, siren). The system can collect temperature measurement results, assigning them to people registered in the database (based on facial identification). And this creates opportunities to analyse trends and make more effective decisions.
BrandsIT: The use of Video Content Analytics tools to measure body temperature sounds interesting and really shows that technology is not an end in itself, but helps us to solve specific problems. Can you point to other positive examples of the use of technology in the age of coronavirus?
Andrzej Lodziana: It is certainly important to highlight the very important role currently played by communication tools that enable remote working. This is an area that has definitely had its five minutes recently, from education and schooling to administration and business. The number of teleconferences, remote training and lectures is increasing. The number of people working in home office mode has definitely increased. This is made possible by solutions such as Cisco Webex or Microsoft Teams, which we also use in net-o-logy.
The increasing scale and intensity of the use of such tools is at the same time a new stimulus for IT companies, as it forces technology providers to continuously optimise performance and ensure the security of transmitted and stored data.
Let us not forget what we do “after hours”, when we stay at home according to the guidelines. We struggle with network bandwidth problems, for which streaming platforms are “responsible” when used much more intensively than under normal conditions. For this reason, among others, Netflix has reduced the quality of the films it streams in response to an appeal by EU Commissioner Thierry Breton.
As a result, we are seeing digital transformation taking place at an accelerated pace.
BrandsIT: Thank you for the interview. What can we wish for each other at this difficult time?
Andrzej Lodziana: Thank you also for the interview. We should wish each other good health and a readiness for even greater social solidarity and a return to the normal state of the pre-Cronavirus era as soon as possible.
