Developed by the Brazilian company Griaule in partnership with the university, the technology has garnered attention following a case of babies being switched at a maternity hospital in Goiás that was discovered three years later

How can we prevent a baby from leaving the maternity ward with the wrong family? The question has returned to the center of the national debate after a court in Goiás ordered Hospital São Sebastião, in Inhumas, to pay R$1 million in compensation to the families of two boys who were switched shortly after birth in 2021. The case, discovered only three years later, exposed flaws in newborn identification protocols and reignited discussions about the use of biometric technologies in Brazilian maternity hospitals.

Against this backdrop, researchers at Unicamp helped develop a tool designed specifically to reduce this type of error. Called BabyID, the technology uses artificial intelligence to identify newborns through biometrics using only the camera on a standard cell phone, without the need for physical contact or specialized equipment.

Developed by the Brazilian company Griaule in partnership with the Institute of Computing at Unicamp, the system records the baby’s fingerprints, face, and iris shortly after birth. The information is linked to the mother’s identification and forms a continuous biometric record starting from the first days of life.

The technical challenge has always been considered one of the main obstacles to this type of identification. In newborns, fingerprints are still small and poorly defined, making it difficult to capture them using traditional methods. According to the researchers involved, the system uses artificial intelligence to digitally process the images, correcting distortions and improving the clarity of the prints.

The case in Goiás

The two babies involved in the Goiás case were born on the same day in October 2021 at the Women’s Hospital in Inhumas, in the Goiânia Metropolitan Area. The mix-up only came to light about three years later, when one of the parents decided to undergo a DNA test because he had doubts about paternity.

The results showed a genetic mismatch not only with the alleged father, but also with the mother who had raised the child since birth. Based on this, the family was able to locate another couple who had also had a baby at the maternity ward that day. The new test confirmed that the boys had been switched after birth.

In October 2025, the court ordered that the children undergo a gradual transition back to their biological families, with planned visits between the two couples and the boys. The children’s birth certificates were even amended to include the names of both mothers and both fathers.

This week, the Court of Justice of Goiás ordered the hospital to pay R$1 million in compensation for emotional distress to the families involved. The ruling acknowledged a failure in the provision of hospital services.

Tests showed recognition rates above 99%

According to Griaule, BabyID was developed over a four-year period through master’s and doctoral research conducted at Unicamp. The technology was tested in Santa Catarina using a database of approximately 5,000 pairs of fingerprints collected at different stages of life.

According to the results released by the company, the system was able to correctly identify 99.77% of the records, even when comparing images taken during the first year of life with others taken up to age 16.

In addition to preventing baby swaps in maternity wards, the company states that the tool can also assist in cases of missing children and help strengthen civil registration systems. Data from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security indicate that approximately 24,000 children and adolescents went missing in Brazil in 2025, an average of 66 per day.

Today, Brazilian law already provides for mechanisms to identify newborns. The Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA) has established this right since 1990, and a Ministry of Health ordinance published in 2018 mandated the linking of Live Birth Certificates to the biometric records of the baby and the mother.

This content was published on the Época Negócios website on May 22, 2026, and can be accessed at this link.