▲ ▼ Universal hyperlocal COVID-19 tracing app
Technology had been an indisputable force multiplier in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic in the countries such as China, Singapore and South Korea.
Apps which provided realtime anonymised movement information of infected patients such as Corona Map in South Korea and community-driven contact tracing app such as BlueTrace in Singapore proved to be hugely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 in those respective countries.
But not all countries are equipped to deploy such apps on demand, so there is a need gap for a universal hyperlocal COVID-19 tracing app, which can be used by any country in the world with significant smartphone penetration.
The primary aspects of such application should be,
- Privacy of the patient, the data should be anonymised to prevent harassment.
- Dashboard for health workers to update realtime information of the places, time where the patient had visited.
- Web application, to ensure compatibility with various devices and for fast update/deployment.
- Open-source.
Hey, COVID Shield projects aims to address the problem you have posted - https://github.com/CovidShield by creating an open-source exposure notification built with privacy as its top priority.
Also, Ireland has open-sourced its COVID tracker app - https://github.com/HSEIreland/covid-tracker-app .
Both projects are now part of Linux Foundation's Public Health Initiative - https://www.lfph.io/ .
LFPH is a great initiative and COVID Shield addresses the need gap I was telling about perfectly. India has open-sourced the android app of the COVID tracking system - https://github.com/nic-delhi/AarogyaSetu_Android.
Moxie Marlinspike, the famous cryptographer and the co-founder of the Signal Foundation (Maker of Signal Messenger) has released the framework for a contact-tracing app which protect the privacy of the individuals using the app; at-least better than the current BTLE methods.