COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions

Contact tracing has become a vital tool for public health officials to effectively combat the spread of new diseases, such as the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. Contact tracing is not new to epidemiologist rather, it used manual or semi-manual approaches that are incredibly time-consuming, cost...

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Main Authors: Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury, Md Sadek Ferdous, Kamanashis Biswas, Niaz Chowdhury, Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2020-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9252092/
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author Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury
Md Sadek Ferdous
Kamanashis Biswas
Niaz Chowdhury
Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy
author_facet Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury
Md Sadek Ferdous
Kamanashis Biswas
Niaz Chowdhury
Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy
author_sort Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury
collection DOAJ
description Contact tracing has become a vital tool for public health officials to effectively combat the spread of new diseases, such as the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. Contact tracing is not new to epidemiologist rather, it used manual or semi-manual approaches that are incredibly time-consuming, costly and inefficient. It mostly relies on human memory while scalability is a significant challenge in tackling pandemics. The unprecedented health and socio-economic impacts led researchers and practitioners around the world to search for technology-based approaches for providing scalable and timely answers. Smartphones and associated digital technologies have the potential to provide a better approach due to their high level of penetration, coupled with mobility. While data-driven solutions are extremely powerful, the fear among citizens is that information like location or proximity associated with other personal data can be weaponised by the states to enforce surveillance. Low adoption rate of such apps due to the lack of trust questioned the efficacy and demanded researchers to find innovative solution for building digital-trust, and appropriately balancing privacy and accuracy of data. In this paper, we have critically reviewed such protocols and apps to identify the strength and weakness of each approach. Finally, we have penned down our recommendations to make the future contact tracing mechanisms more universally inter-operable and privacy-preserving.
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spelling doaj.art-f53dced7362a4b6e9d8ae55815840f732022-12-21T18:38:53ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362020-01-01822570322572910.1109/ACCESS.2020.30367189252092COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future DirectionsMohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4476-8882Md Sadek Ferdous1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8361-4870Kamanashis Biswas2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3719-8607Niaz Chowdhury3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2227-4187Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6787-6379Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, AustraliaDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, BangladeshPeter Faber Business School, Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, NSW, AustraliaKnowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K.School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, AustraliaContact tracing has become a vital tool for public health officials to effectively combat the spread of new diseases, such as the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. Contact tracing is not new to epidemiologist rather, it used manual or semi-manual approaches that are incredibly time-consuming, costly and inefficient. It mostly relies on human memory while scalability is a significant challenge in tackling pandemics. The unprecedented health and socio-economic impacts led researchers and practitioners around the world to search for technology-based approaches for providing scalable and timely answers. Smartphones and associated digital technologies have the potential to provide a better approach due to their high level of penetration, coupled with mobility. While data-driven solutions are extremely powerful, the fear among citizens is that information like location or proximity associated with other personal data can be weaponised by the states to enforce surveillance. Low adoption rate of such apps due to the lack of trust questioned the efficacy and demanded researchers to find innovative solution for building digital-trust, and appropriately balancing privacy and accuracy of data. In this paper, we have critically reviewed such protocols and apps to identify the strength and weakness of each approach. Finally, we have penned down our recommendations to make the future contact tracing mechanisms more universally inter-operable and privacy-preserving.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9252092/COVID-19contact tracingprivacyproximity technologies
spellingShingle Mohammad Jabed Morshed Chowdhury
Md Sadek Ferdous
Kamanashis Biswas
Niaz Chowdhury
Vallipuram Muthukkumarasamy
COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions
IEEE Access
COVID-19
contact tracing
privacy
proximity technologies
title COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions
title_full COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions
title_fullStr COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions
title_short COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Challenges and Future Directions
title_sort covid 19 contact tracing challenges and future directions
topic COVID-19
contact tracing
privacy
proximity technologies
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9252092/
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AT mdsadekferdous covid19contacttracingchallengesandfuturedirections
AT kamanashisbiswas covid19contacttracingchallengesandfuturedirections
AT niazchowdhury covid19contacttracingchallengesandfuturedirections
AT vallipurammuthukkumarasamy covid19contacttracingchallengesandfuturedirections