Tracking, tracing, trust: contemplating mitigating the impact of
            <scp>COVID</scp>
            ‐19 with technological interventions

Leins, Kobi; Culnane, Chris; Rubinstein, Benjamin I. P.

doi:10.5694/mja2.50669

Cited by 28 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…COVID-19 tracing applications have been developed and used in many developed countries, with the aim of assisting manual contract tracing, although their effectiveness and privacy implications are still being debated. 24 General practitioners are triaging persons with symptoms via telehealth, taking swabs from drive-through clinics, and manning super 'fever clinics'. Pharmacists are collating and sharing pharmaceutical stock data with the government to assist in the management and rationing of the national supply.…”

Section: Supported With Information and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: building and sustaining trust in times of uncertainty

Ahern

Loh

2020

leader

110

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Section: Supported With Information and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: building and sustaining trust in times of uncertainty

Ahern

Loh

2020

leader

110

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“…Timely and effective contact tracing is an essential public health measure to curb the transmission of COVID-19. Contact tracing apps are controversial in their design and level of effectiveness [3,5,6] but they might have the potential to prevent wide-spread community transmission and optimise the resources of overstretched public health organisations [9]. An important driver in it's efficiency is wide-spread public adoption [9].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To improve public health tracing and the speed at which this occurs, several countries have introduced app- based contact tracing. Contact tracing apps vary in design from reporting symptoms to public health authorities [3] to allowing access to phone data after testing positive to COVID-19 [4] and in whether the data is centralized [5]. Those apps in current use have had varying degrees of success [3,6] Since the Australian Government launched the COVIDSafe app [4] over 6 million (almost 25%) Australians have downloaded the app, but this is still short of the 40% proposed target to be effective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than privacy: Australians’ concerns and misconceptions about the COVIDSafe App

Thomas

Michaleff

Greenwood

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…The three most frequently adopted types of functions in the group of reviewed contact tracing apps were (1) information about geographical coverage, (2) contact alerting, and (3) governmental responsibility. The two least frequently adopted functions were (1) medical and organizational support and (2) efficiency threshold (Multimedia Appendix 6 [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]). Out of the 21 apps, 19 (90%) received support from governments, but only 1 (5%) provided the additional threshold required to establish an app's efficiency.…”

Section: Assessment Of the Apps' Fulfillment Of Public Health Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

State of the Art in Adoption of Contact Tracing Apps and Recommendations Regarding Privacy Protection and Public Health: Systematic Review

Kolasa¹,

Mazzi²,

Leszczuk-Czubkowska³

et al. 2021

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing apps have received a lot of public attention. The ongoing debate highlights the challenges of the adoption of data-driven innovation. We reflect on how to ensure an appropriate level of protection of individual data and how to maximize public health benefits that can be derived from the collected data. Objective The aim of the study was to analyze available COVID-19 contact tracing apps and verify to what extent public health interests and data privacy standards can be fulfilled simultaneously in the process of the adoption of digital health technologies. Methods A systematic review of PubMed and MEDLINE databases, as well as grey literature, was performed to identify available contact tracing apps. Two checklists were developed to evaluate (1) the apps’ compliance with data privacy standards and (2) their fulfillment of public health interests. Based on both checklists, a scorecard with a selected set of minimum requirements was created with the goal of estimating whether the balance between the objective of data privacy and public health interests can be achieved in order to ensure the broad adoption of digital technologies. Results Overall, 21 contact tracing apps were reviewed. In total, 11 criteria were defined to assess the usefulness of each digital technology for public health interests. The most frequently installed features related to contact alerting and governmental accountability. The least frequently installed feature was the availability of a system of medical or organizational support. Only 1 app out of 21 (5%) provided a threshold for the population coverage needed for the digital solution to be effective. In total, 12 criteria were used to assess the compliance of contact tracing apps with data privacy regulations. Explicit user consent, voluntary use, and anonymization techniques were among the most frequently fulfilled criteria. The least often implemented criteria were provisions of information about personal data breaches and data gathered from children. The balance between standards of data protection and public health benefits was achieved best by the COVIDSafe app and worst by the Alipay Health Code app. Conclusions Contact tracing apps with high levels of compliance with standards of data privacy tend to fulfill public health interests to a limited extent. Simultaneously, digital technologies with a lower level of data privacy protection allow for the collection of more data. Overall, this review shows that a consistent number of apps appear to comply with standards of data privacy, while their usefulness from a public health perspective can still be maximized.

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Tracking, tracing, trust: contemplating mitigating the impact of COVID ‐19 with technological interventions

Cited by 28 publications

References 2 publications

Leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: building and sustaining trust in times of uncertainty

Leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: building and sustaining trust in times of uncertainty

More than privacy: Australians’ concerns and misconceptions about the COVIDSafe App

State of the Art in Adoption of Contact Tracing Apps and Recommendations Regarding Privacy Protection and Public Health: Systematic Review

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