The Value and Ethics of Using Technology to Contain the COVID-19 Epidemic

Dubov, Alex; Shoptawb, Steven

doi:10.1080/15265161.2020.1764136

Cited by 57 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…Therefore, many countries have jumped on the bandwagon of contact tracing apps [ 16 - 19 ] to augment contact tracing capabilities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, Singapore launched its first Bluetooth-based contact tracing app—TraceTogether—in March 2020 [ 16 , 18 ]. The app is available on both the Google and Apple app stores, and approximately one-sixth of Singapore residents downloaded the app during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020 [ 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of Digital Contact Tracing Tools for COVID-19 Response in Singapore: Cross-Sectional Study

Huang¹,

Guo²,

Lee³

et al. 2020

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background Effective contact tracing is labor intensive and time sensitive during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also essential in the absence of effective treatment and vaccines. Singapore launched the first Bluetooth-based contact tracing app—TraceTogether—in March 2020 to augment Singapore’s contact tracing capabilities. Objective This study aims to compare the performance of the contact tracing app—TraceTogether—with that of a wearable tag-based real-time locating system (RTLS) and to validate them against the electronic medical records at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), the national referral center for COVID-19 screening. Methods All patients and physicians in the NCID screening center were issued RTLS tags (CADI Scientific) for contact tracing. In total, 18 physicians were deployed to the NCID screening center from May 10 to May 20, 2020. The physicians activated the TraceTogether app (version 1.6; GovTech) on their smartphones during shifts and urged their patients to use the app. We compared patient contacts identified by TraceTogether and those identified by RTLS tags within the NCID vicinity during physicians’ 10-day posting. We also validated both digital contact tracing tools by verifying the physician-patient contacts with the electronic medical records of 156 patients who attended the NCID screening center over a 24-hour time frame within the study period. Results RTLS tags had a high sensitivity of 95.3% for detecting patient contacts identified either by the system or TraceTogether while TraceTogether had an overall sensitivity of 6.5% and performed significantly better on Android phones than iPhones (Android: 9.7%, iPhone: 2.7%; P<.001). When validated against the electronic medical records, RTLS tags had a sensitivity of 96.9% and specificity of 83.1%, while TraceTogether only detected 2 patient contacts with physicians who did not attend to them. Conclusions TraceTogether had a much lower sensitivity than RTLS tags for identifying patient contacts in a clinical setting. Although the tag-based RTLS performed well for contact tracing in a clinical setting, its implementation in the community would be more challenging than TraceTogether. Given the uncertainty of the adoption and capabilities of contact tracing apps, policy makers should be cautioned against overreliance on such apps for contact tracing. Nonetheless, leveraging technology to augment conventional manual contact tracing is a necessary move for returning some normalcy to life during the long haul of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of Digital Contact Tracing Tools for COVID-19 Response in Singapore: Cross-Sectional Study

Huang¹,

Guo²,

Lee³

et al. 2020

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Countries like Chad and the Central African Republic with poor ICT infrastructure find it hard to deploy limited resources toward technological innovation as part of their COVID-19 pandemic response plan [ 33 ]. Also, setting-up health information systems as a response to pandemics including national health information systems, electronic health records and telemedicine require an ethical framework for digital epidemiology and technological interventions to boost trust and expedite the adoption of emerging technologies in health systems [ 34 ].…”

Section: Contact Tracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating emerging technologies into COVID-19 contact tracing: Opportunities, challenges and pitfalls

Mbunge

2020

Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Revi

175

157

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Background and aims With no approved vaccines for treating COVID-19 as of August 2020, many health systems and governments rely on contact tracing as one of the prevention and containment methods. However, there have been instances when the infected person forgets his/her contact-persons and does not have their contact details. Therefore, this study aimed at analyzing possible opportunities and challenges of integrating emerging technologies into COVID-19 contact tracing. Methods The study applied literature search from Google Scholar, Science Direct, PubMed, Web of Science, IEEE and WHO COVID-19 reports and guidelines analyzed. Results While the integration of technology-based contact tracing applications to combat COVID-19 and break transmission chains promise to yield better results, these technologies face challenges such as technical limitations, dealing with asymptomatic individuals, lack of supporting ICT infrastructure and electronic health policy, socio-economic inequalities, deactivation of mobile devices’ WIFI, GPS services, interoperability and standardization issues, security risks, privacy issues, political and structural responses, ethical and legal risks, consent and voluntariness, abuse of contact tracing apps, and discrimination. Conclusion Integrating emerging technologies into COVID-19 contact tracing is seen as a viable option that policymakers, health practitioners and IT technocrats need to seriously consider in mitigating the spread of coronavirus. Further research is also required on how best to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the utilisation of emerging technologies in contact tracing while observing the security and privacy of people in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“…However, many applications are not following such solutions and Howell et al has suggested five primary privacy concerns for COVID-19 application frameworks [16]. [18], [20].…”

Section: ) Privacy Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Privacy-Preserving Mobile and Fog Computing Framework to Trace and Prevent COVID-19 Community Transmission

Whaiduzzaman

Hossain

Shovon

et al. 2020

IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform.

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To slow down the spread of COVID-19, governments worldwide are trying to identify infected people and contain the virus by enforcing isolation and quarantine. However, it is difficult to trace people who came into contact with an infected person, which causes widespread community transmission and mass infection. To address this problem, we develop an e-government Privacy-Preserving Mobile and Fog computing framework entitled PPMF that can trace infected and suspected cases nationwide. We use personal mobile devices with contact tracing app and two types of stationary fog nodes, named Automatic Risk Checkers (ARC) and Suspected User Data Uploader Node (SUDUN), to trace community transmission alongside maintaining user data privacy. Each user's mobile device receives a Unique Encrypted Reference Code (UERC) when registering on the central application. The mobile device and the central application both generate Rotational Unique Encrypted Reference Code (RUERC), which broadcasted using the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology. The ARCs are placed at the entry points of buildings, which can immediately detect if there are positive or suspected cases nearby. If any confirmed case is found, the ARCs broadcast precautionary messages to nearby people without revealing the identity of the infected person. The SUDUNs are placed at the health centers that report test results to the central cloud application. The reported data is later used to map between infected and suspected cases. Therefore, using our proposed PPMF framework, governments can let organizations continue their economic activities without complete lockdown.

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The Value and Ethics of Using Technology to Contain the COVID-19 Epidemic

Cited by 57 publications

References 10 publications

Performance of Digital Contact Tracing Tools for COVID-19 Response in Singapore: Cross-Sectional Study

Performance of Digital Contact Tracing Tools for COVID-19 Response in Singapore: Cross-Sectional Study

Integrating emerging technologies into COVID-19 contact tracing: Opportunities, challenges and pitfalls

A Privacy-Preserving Mobile and Fog Computing Framework to Trace and Prevent COVID-19 Community Transmission

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