Proof of concept showing how mobile technologies in general and bluetooth in particular could help with the COVID-19 situation.
This is a very simple (iOS only for now) POC that shows how we could leverage bluetooth technology in every mobile phone to help develop better isolation policies.
Complete isolation cannot last until a vaccine is ready. Removing existing isolation measures blindly would create a new wave of COVID-19 infections. Controlled isolation could be a solution.
When someone tests positives for the virus, it is critical to put them and those that have been in contact with them on isolation. Locating those that have in close contact with someone is not always easy. Co-workers, flatmates and closed family is easy to identify. But what about that person that sat next to you on a tube ride for 30m?
Using the Bluetooth on your phone, we could determine what people have been in contact with you and for how long. On top of that, this can be done in an anonymised way.
- Medical authorities do not to know where you were. Just that you were in contact with another person.
- The application does not need to share or even store your personal information. Just a random userId that identify yourself as a user.
Every time the application "sees" another device running the app within its bluetooth range, it stores that userId and timestamp.
A demo running the app can be found here.
- Proper registration and login system.
- Calculating for how long 2 people have been in contact, not just the timestamp.
- Persisting the information.
- Push notification integration. That would be to simulate the medical authorities' role where upon someone testing positive for the virus, they could send a notification to all phones so that anyone in contact with that user would asked to quarantine themselves.