GoCoronaGo: Privacy Respecting Contact Tracing for COVID-19 Management

The COVID-19 pandemic is imposing enormous global challenges in managing the spread of the virus. A key pillar to mitigation is contact tracing, which complements testing and isolation. Digital apps for contact tracing using Bluetooth technology available in smartphones have gained prevalence global...

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Published in:Journal of the Indian Institute of Science 2020-10, Vol.100 (4), p.623-646
Main Authors: Simmhan, Yogesh, Rambha, Tarun, Khochare, Aakash, Ramesh, Shriram, Baranawal, Animesh, George, John Varghese, Bhope, Rahul Atul, Namtirtha, Amrita, Sundararajan, Amritha, Bhargav, Sharath Suresh, Thakkar, Nihar, Kiran, Raj
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chemistry and Materials Science
Chemistry/Food Science
Engineering
Materials Science
Physics
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic is imposing enormous global challenges in managing the spread of the virus. A key pillar to mitigation is contact tracing, which complements testing and isolation. Digital apps for contact tracing using Bluetooth technology available in smartphones have gained prevalence globally. In this article, we discuss various capabilities of such digital contact tracing, and its implication on community safety and individual privacy, among others. We further describe the GoCoronaGo institutional contact tracing app that we have developed, and the conscious and sometimes contrarian design choices we have made. We offer a detailed overview of the app, backend platform and analytics, and our early experiences with deploying the app to over 1000 users within the Indian Institute of Science campus in Bangalore. We also highlight research opportunities and open challenges for digital contact tracing and analytics over temporal networks constructed from them.
ISSN:0970-4140
0019-4964
DOI:10.1007/s41745-020-00201-5