Will Emerging Contact Tracing Solutions Be Put to Work?

Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative launched by global health organization Vital Strategies, released a playbook that describes four essential actions governments need to take to reopen society quickly and safely in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: Test widely—> Isolate infected people—> Find people who have been in contact with infected people—> Ask those people to quarantine for 14 days. Step three—contact tracing—is crucial for controlling spread of the novel coronavirus and for understanding how it spreads. While tech companies race to develop technology that will help identify at-risk locations and individuals, public health departments and the public are mostly eyeing this technology with caution. Politics aside, to implement contact tracing technology effectively on a national scale would require somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of Americans’ participation. Given privacy concerns, that’s not an easy ask. Tracking Paths and Places Apple and Google’s Exposure Notification API, which health agencies can use to develop contact tracing apps, has gotten global attention as of late. About 22 countries and some U.S. states have already incorporated or received access to the API. Apps using the API can send notifications to individuals who have been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. However, its l...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Digital Health Source Type: news