India’s First AI-based Covid Testing Facility at IGI Airport to Test Hundreds in Minutes

An interior shot of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi where the country’s first artificial intelligence-enabled Covid-19 testing facility has been set up. (IANS photo)

NEW DELHI – India’s first artificial intelligence-enabled Covid-19 testing facility for international passengers has commenced operations at terminal 3 of the IGI Airport here.

The facility under the Garuda brand name is owned by the AI company, Thalamus Irwine.

According to the company, the facility is run by an AI-system using computer vision technology and a paper-free backend for processing mass volumes of international passengers.

Presently, destination countries require an ‘Antigen Test’ negative report to allow the passengers into their jurisdictions.

Industry players such as Lufthansa, KLM, and Air France, among others, have had success using the facility.

After the test, passengers get their results in 10-15 minutes on their on mobile phones.

As per the company, the passengers of an entire international flight can be tested within a couple of minutes by using the ‘scalable node architecture,’ ‘complete digital systems for patient entry,’ ‘AI driven process improvement’ and ‘SoP management.’

Besides, IGI Airport’s HOI app allows for seamless management of patient flow to the facility.

In terms of the technology, the system even monitors the SoPs and ensures employees and users are maintaining high levels of security and compliance standards in the sample processing room.

It noted that the facility eliminates majority of the bottlenecks associated with the need to test multiple passengers in quick succession.

The cloud-based infrastructure also ensures independence from physical storage on premise.

Furthermore, the facility offers several firsts such as AI-based monitoring of every move the staff makes so as to monitor the safety protocols such as adherence to SoPs during sample collection etc.

In case the SoPs are flouted, the system intervenes by alerting the employees to correct their behavior and also informs the store manager.

In addition, the AI ensures there aren’t discrepancies between the results entered by the employees with those generated by the system.

Notably, the system acts as a second layer of protection to eliminate incorrect entry of data.

“This center has been designed bearing in mind the current requirement for fulfilling last minute testing needs of the travelers, where the volume is large and time is of the essence and there is absolutely no possibility of downtime,” said Thalamus Irwine CEO Rishabh Sharma.

“Credit goes to DIAL’s visionary leadership in embracing technology as the frontier tool in ensuring bottlenecks can be eliminated and passengers can get a hassle-free service towards creating a safer air traffic,” Sharma added.

At present, India has banned scheduled international flights. However, passengers can still travel to and from few countries under the various ‘Air Bubble’ agreements that have been entered by the center.