Tracy: Smartphone-based Contact Tracing Solution that Supports Self-investigation to Limit the Spread of COVID-19

Abstract

The unprecedented spread of COVID-19 pandemic has become the main challenge for several countries around the world. One of the crucial measures taken to control and manage the diffusion of COVID-19 pandemic is contact tracing. The approach is based on tracing and identifying people who have been exposed to an infected individual to prevent onward transmission by alerting those who came in contact with the positive case; thus, isolation measures and suitable precautions can be taken. By using the communication and localization technologies embedded on the smartphones, those who made contact can be effectively traced by continuously collecting the timestamped locations and contacts of the owners. In this paper, an innovative privacy preserving smartphone-based contact tracing solution named 'Tracy' is proposed to help the health facilities to limit and control the spread of COVID-19 especially with the upcoming second wave of the virus. The proposed system consists of three main components: an intelligent application installed on smartphones, a data processing platform, and a website on which the different functions of those parts are integrated to provide the required services for the contact tracing solution. The system is designed to allow individuals to investigate the possibility of them contacting a person infected with the emerging coronavirus. A novel algorithm is designed to determine the effective location points in the individual's routes in which possible contacts can happen and based on these effective points, the prior contacts are decided. The system is also designed to provide an effective communication method with the local health facilities to receive medical advice and precautionary measures required for those who have discovered the possibility of contact with COVID-19. The reliability and scalability of the proposed solution is recognized by the usage of effective contact location points to determine the point of contact with the infected rather than using all the points of the individual's route.

Smartphone Applications for Contact Tracing in Covid-19 Epidemic: A Systematic Review

“…Three studies relied on the principle of proximity using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology [17] [19] [20], one of which used GPS optionally to determine the location [20]. While the other three studies relied on the principle of location using GPS technology [21] [23] [24], one of them used BLE to improve location accuracy only [21], and another study used a QR code in tracking [22]. One study developed the application in a joint response interface for both smartphone and PC users utilizing the classic web stack: PHP and MySQL [23].…”

“…Nevertheless, if it is not used the application, the sites are added manually to the server via the "Report Case" window. In [24], the authors developed two algorithms. The first is used to extract the efficient points of the path of the person, utilizing the K-means algorithm to find the effective location by the data processing platform then send the results to all system-registered smartphones.…”

“…(Table 2) show the reviewed objective of the Intervention or exposure and the main outcomes. Both [23] and [24] are based on GPS only and it's hard to maintain user privacy when deploying the GPS.…”

“…Some of these challenges are related to infected individuals who can carry the disease for 14-21 days without any symptoms. As a result, the virus is transmitted to other people they have come into contact with and making it highly contagious [24]. In addition, the challenge of there is no means of ensuring that users report confirmed diagnoses through the app [22].…”

SPIN: A Blockchain-Based Framework for Sharing COVID-19 Pandemic Information across Nations

“…A wide range of papers have been published aiming to address the challenges related to COVID-19, mainly for diagnosing COVID-19 [51][52][53][54], collecting public web data [55], contact tracing [56][57][58], social distancing [59,60], vaccine delivery [61][62][63], and immunity passports [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Kalla et al [64] discussed the different use cases for blockchain technology to fight against COVID-19.…”