digital health tools
We discuss the concept of a participatory digital contact notification approach to assist tracing of contacts who are exposed to confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19);
The core functionality of our concept is to provide a usable, labor-saving tool for contact tracing by confirmed cases themselves
the approach is simple and affordable for countries with limited access to health care resources and advanced technology.
The proposed tool serves as a supplemental contract tracing approach to counteract the shortage of health care staff while providing privacy protection for both cases and contacts.
- This tool can be deployed on the internet or as a plugin for a smartphone app.
- Confirmed cases with COVID-19 can use this tool to provide contact information (either email addresses or mobile phone numbers) of close contacts.
- The system will then automatically send a message to the contacts informing them of their contact status, what this status means, the actions that should follow (eg, self-quarantine, respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette), and advice for receiving early care if they develop symptoms.
- The name of the sender of the notification message by email or mobile phone can be anonymous or not.
- The message received by the contact contains no disease information but contains a security code for the contact to log on the platform to retrieve the information.
Conclusion
The successful application of this tool relies heavily on public social responsibility and credibility, and it remains to be seen if the public would adopt such a tool and what mechanisms are required to prevent misuse.
This is a simple tool that does not require complicated computer techniques despite strict user privacy protection design with respect to countries and regions. Additionally, this tool can help avoid coercive surveillance, facilitate the allocation of health resources, and prioritize clinical service for patients with COVID-19. Information obtained from the platform can also increase our understanding of the epidemiology of COVID-19.
read this concept paper at https://mhealth.jmir.org/2020/6/e20369
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Contact tracing aims to avoid transmission by isolating, at an early stage, only those individuals who are infectious or potentially infectious, to minimize the societal costs associated with isolation. Considerable resources are therefore directed at improving surveillance capacities to allow efficient and rapid investigation and isolation of cases and their contacts. To enhance tracing capacities, the use of digital technologies has been proposed, leveraging the widespread use of smartphones. Therefore, proximity-sensing applications have been designed and made available to automatically trace contacts, notify users about potential exposure to COVID-19, and invite them to isolate.
The efficacy of digital contact tracing against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic is debated: Smartphone penetration is limited in many countries, with low coverage among the elderly, the most vulnerable to COVID-19.
Quantifying the impact of digital contact tracing is essential to envision this strategy within a wider response plan against the COVID-19 epidemic.
We modeled this intervention together with household isolation assuming a 50% detection of clinical cases. In a scenario of high transmissibility (R = 2.6), we found that household isolation by itself would produce a reduction in peak incidence of 27%, while the inclusion of digital contact tracing could increase this effect by 30% for a reasonably achievable app adoption (~20% of the population) and by 144% for a large-scale app adoption (~60%). At a moderate transmissibility level (R = 1.7), the app would substantially damp transmission (36 to 89% peak incidence reduction for increasing app adoption), bringing the epidemic to manageable levels if adopted by 32% of the population or more.
The app-based tracing and household isolation have different effects across settings, the first intervention efficiently preventing transmissions at work that are not well targeted by the second.
Moreover, app-based contact tracing also yields a protection for the elderly despite the lower penetration of smartphones in this age category.
These results may inform the inclusion of digital contact tracing within a COVID-19 response plan.
read the study at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/15/eabd8750
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