Covid-19 Passport from iProov and Mvine Moves Into Trial Phase

Covid-19 immunity and vaccination passport developed by British firms Mvine and iProov, backed by Innovate UK, moves into live testing phase

LONDON, SINGAPORE & CATONSVILLE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mvine and iProov announce today their design for a simple, secure and widely recognized Covid-19 immunity and vaccination passport will now move into live testing. The Mvine-iProov passport enables a person’s test result or vaccination status to be registered and proved without disclosing their identity, and without the need for extensive new infrastructure.

With additional backing from Innovate UK, which initially funded the development of a successful working prototype, the Mvine-iProov passport will now be tested by Directors of Public Health within the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. Mvine and iProov aim to complete two trials by 31 March 2021, giving Directors of Public Health across the country the confidence to deploy the passport at scale to benefit their local areas.

Crucially, the Mvine-iProov passport can be plugged into the NHS’ existing infrastructure, enabling it to meet the specific needs of local Directors of Public Health and any overarching national requirements. This flexibility ensures that areas in different tiers or levels of vaccination rollout can set appropriate policies and enforce them with confidence.

The Mvine-iProov passport has been developed quickly and cost-efficiently, with a total £75,000 investment from Innovate UK following a call for ideas in April 2020. It is expected this investment in UK innovation will help businesses and employees return to work, and enable families and friends to reconnect, more quickly and more responsibly than would otherwise be possible.

Frank Joshi, Director at Mvine, said: “Without the need for an extensive new infrastructure, the Directors of Public Health will learn how our innovation is used to promote public health and protect citizen privacy. Unlike some other digital solutions for Covid-19, this technology reduces the burden on frontline services and cost-effectively assures a secure and safe way to enable the return to work, return to school and return to the kind of life that people want to lead.”

Andrew Bud, CEO at iProov, said: “Ensuring consumer trust, security and privacy is essential to the success of projects in this space. iProov enables all three. Our Genuine Presence Assurance technology secures the link between the citizen and Mvine’s test status solution in this project, which we think can make an important contribution to forming the national response to the COVID-19 crisis.”

ENDS

About iProov

Founded in 2012, iProov is the world leader in online facial biometric authentication, working with governments, banks and other enterprises to remotely verify customer identity. Used for onboarding and authentication, customers include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the UK Home Office, the UK National Health Service (NHS), GovTech Singapore, Eurostar, Rabobank, ING, and others. iProov’s unique patented technology provides Genuine Presence Assurance, ensuring that an online customer is the right person, a real person, and authenticating right now. This protects against spoof attacks from photos, videos, masks and the emerging threat of deepfakes. iProov was recognized as the 5th fastest growing technology company in the UK in the Deloitte 2020 UK Technology Fast 50 and was also named a Gartner Cool Vendor 2020 in Identity Access Management & Fraud Detection. For more information, please see www.iproov.com

About Mvine

Mvine Limited is a British deep tech company delivering next generation platforms that power the digital economy. It is perhaps best known for its work in providing cyber-secure collaboration portals, in use in the financial services sector as virtual deal rooms and in other industries as procurement portals and as diversity/equality portals. The company has also pursued identity management and its technology is in use in the telecoms sector for federated authentication and in other industries for single sign on identity, authentication and authorization. www.mvine.com

About Innovate UK

Innovate UK drives productivity and economic growth by supporting businesses to develop and realise the potential of new ideas. We connect businesses to the partners, customers and investors that can help them turn ideas into commercially successful products and services and business growth. We fund business and research collaborations to accelerate innovation and drive business investment into R&D. Our support is available to businesses across all economic sectors, value chains and UK regions. Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation. For more information visit www.innovateuk.ukri.org

Fact Checking

The UK government announcement on 20 May 2020 to expand the funding envelope from £20 million to £40 million meant 800 funding awards could be made. The original announcement was made on 3 April 2020 by BEIS, Innovate UK and Amanda Solloway MP. The competition opened Friday 3 April 2020 and closed Friday 17 April 2020.