COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions

Chowdhury, Mohammad Jabed Morshed; Ferdous, Sadek; Biswas, Kamanashis; Chowdhury, Niaz; Muthukkumarasamy, Vallipuram

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3036718

Cited by 59 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“… Addressing technical constraints— Proximity accuracy issues with Bluetooth technology has been addressed in the recent update of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). However, there is still room for improvement in the development of new protocols and refined calibration of BLE signal strength that can enhance this technology [ 59 , 78 , 79 ]. Improving user behaviour and participation— Currently, there a few studies about the psychological factors that would influence the adoption of an app for contact tracing at present for the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19.…”

Section: Discussion Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contact tracing apps for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review of challenges and future directions for neo-liberal societies

Akinbi

Forshaw

Blinkhorn

2021

Health Inf Sci Syst

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Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has spread with increased fatalities around the world and has become an international public health crisis. Public health authorities in many countries have introduced contact tracing apps to track and trace infected persons as part of measures to contain the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus 2. However, there are major concerns about its efficacy and privacy which affects mass acceptance amongst a population. This systematic literature review encompasses the current challenges facing this technology and recommendations to address such challenges in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in neo-liberal societies. Methods The systematic literature review was conducted by searching databases of Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, PsycInfo and ScienceDirect using the search terms (“Contact Tracing” OR “Contact Tracing apps”) AND (“COVID-19” OR “Coronavirus”) to identify relevant literature. The searches were run against the title, keywords, or abstract, depending on the search platforms. The searches were conducted between January 1, 2020, through 31st January 2021. Further inputs were also taken from preprints, published government and technical reports. We explore and discuss from the selected literature, the key challenges and issues that influence unwillingness to use these contact tracing apps in neo-liberal societies which include the plausibility of abuse of user privacy rights and lack of trust in the government and public health authorities by their citizens. Other challenges identified and discussed include ethical issues, security vulnerabilities, user behaviour and participation, and technical constraints. Results and conclusion Finally, in the analysis of this systematic literature review, recommendations to address these challenges, future directions, and considerations in the use of digital contact tracing apps and related technologies to contain the spread of future pandemic outbreaks are presented. For policy makers in neo-liberal societies, this study provides an in-depth review of issues that must be addressed. We highlight recommendations to improve the willingness to use such digital technologies and could facilitate mass acceptance amongst users.

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Section: Discussion Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contact tracing apps for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review of challenges and future directions for neo-liberal societies

Akinbi

Forshaw

Blinkhorn

2021

Health Inf Sci Syst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…• Decaying diffusion model -decaying diffusion factor: η ∈ {0.9, 0.95, 0, 99} , (40,14), (20,49), (10,99), (5,199), (4,249), (2,499), (1, 999)} We evaluate each experiment by the accuracy of the estimated trajectory. We measure this accuracy by the mean and median of the Euclidean distances between the weighted position means, or estimations, and their corresponding ground truth positions.…”

Section: Experiments and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the aging population of the world, health workers need assistive systems for tracking elderly or sick people in order to mitigate their workload [1]. The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced the contact tracing notion, which can also be resolved with accurate positioning systems [2]. In marketing and retail, these systems help make targeted and location based promotions or advertisements by tracking the client behaviors [3].…”

Section: A Indoor Positioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo Filter for Indoor Positioning and Tracking With Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons

2021

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We model the tracking of Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) transmitters as a three layer hidden Markov model with joint state and parameter estimation. We are after a filtering distribution by Bayesian approximation using Monte Carlo sampling techniques. In a test environment decorated with multiple BLE sensors, the tracking relies only on the naturally unreliable received signal strength indicator (RSSI) of the captured signals. We assume that the tracked BLE transmitter does not provide any other motion or position related information. Hence, the transition density is designed to be merely a diffusion where the probability measures are diffused into the neighboring space. This makes the diagonal error covariance factor of the prediction density, namely the diffusion factor, the most important parameter to be tuned on the fly. We first show an experimental proof of concept using synthetic data on real trajectories by comparing three parameter estimation approaches: static, decaying and adaptive diffusion factors. We then obtain the results on real data which show that online parameter sampling adapts to the observed data and yields lower error means and medians, but more importantly steady error distributions with respect to a large range of parameters. INDEX TERMS Bluetooth low-energy, indoor positioning and tracking, parameter estimation, sequential Monte Carlo, wasserstein interpolation

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“…As the proximity of users is being broadcasted at all times with these apps along with their personal data, users can become suspicious about being surveilled by their government. Therefore, the information being shared by users must be handled lawfully, with user consent, and in compliance with the GDPR to keep personal information private and identities anonymous [ 48 , 49 ]. Some countries like China and India have made their contact tracing app mandatory for every citizen, while others have made it voluntary whereby only interested users can download and use it.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blockchain-Based Digital Contact Tracing Apps for COVID-19 Pandemic Management: Issues, Challenges, Solutions, and Future Directions

Idrees¹,

Nowostawski²,

Jameel³

2021

JMIR Med Inform

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial global disturbance by affecting more than 42 million people (as of the end of October 2020). Since there is no medication or vaccine available, the only way to combat it is to minimize transmission. Digital contact tracing is an effective technique that can be utilized for this purpose, as it eliminates the manual contact tracing process and could help in identifying and isolating affected people. However, users are reluctant to share their location and contact details due to concerns related to the privacy and security of their personal information, which affects its implementation and extensive adoption. Blockchain technology has been applied in various domains and has been proven to be an effective approach for handling data transactions securely, which makes it an ideal choice for digital contact tracing apps. The properties of blockchain such as time stamping and immutability of data may facilitate the retrieval of accurate information on the trail of the virus in a transparent manner, while data encryption assures the integrity of the information being provided. Furthermore, the anonymity of the user’s identity alleviates some of the risks related to privacy and confidentiality concerns. In this paper, we provide readers with a detailed discussion on the digital contact tracing mechanism and outline the apps developed so far to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we present the possible risks, issues, and challenges associated with the available contact tracing apps and analyze how the adoption of a blockchain-based decentralized network for handling the app could provide users with privacy-preserving contact tracing without compromising performance and efficiency.

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COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions

Cited by 59 publications

References 48 publications

Contact tracing apps for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review of challenges and future directions for neo-liberal societies

Contact tracing apps for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review of challenges and future directions for neo-liberal societies

Adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo Filter for Indoor Positioning and Tracking With Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons

Blockchain-Based Digital Contact Tracing Apps for COVID-19 Pandemic Management: Issues, Challenges, Solutions, and Future Directions

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