Effective digital contact tracing is critical to controlling the pandemic and future outbreaks.
Fremont, CA: Pandemics have been known to return in some form. The most significant problem with managing them is their inherent characteristics of progressing and spreading fastly across a huge population. Vaccines help prevent disease spread, but they need time to develop. Effective contact tracing is important in this situation. Luckily, technical solutions are available to ensure that contact tracking is quick and successful.
Contact tracing in its actual form is a time-taking and labor-intensive means that depends on interviews and inquiry. Still, now-available technologies can help by reducing the reliance on a person's capacity to recall all the people they confronted in the past two weeks. It is workable to facilitate the track-and-trace option in intelligent devices like smartphones, smartwatches, and smart bands in the linked world, where people convey smart gadgets everywhere.
Some technologies allowing digital contact tracing for safety in a pandemic are:
Bluetooth proximity tracing
This is the most repeatedly employed technology for this objective. Bluetooth Low Energy is utilized here to trace the interactions between two smart devices while keeping the identifiers of surrounding devices anonymous. Based on an app's locally kept contact history log, an alarm notification is sent to other acknowledged users as soon as the person is recognized. Google and Apple have both used this procedure in their contact-tracking apps.
Location tracing
Cellular triangulation of network towers or GNSS integrated with smart gadgets can be employed to track location. The gain0 of network tower-based tracking is that it eradicates the need to download an app. However, it raises issues about privacy.
GEO-QR code tracking
Cellular triangulation of network towers or GNSS in smart devices can be employed to track location. The boon of network tower-based tracking is that it does not need the installation of an app. Nevertheless, it creates privacy concerns.
Ultrasound
Cell phones intercepted by other smartphones emit ultrasound signals. NOVID and SONAR-X are digital contact-tracking apps that utilize ultrasound to present sub-meter contact-tracking aptitudes.
Empowering contact tracing solutions through smartphones and smart wearables and retaining people's privacy is essential for precisely recognizing and tracing infected persons and saving lives in future outbreaks.
