A report from Science Times earlier this month discusses the government urging scientists to make an application for tracking down the people that the COVID-19 patient has been in contact with.
Fortunately, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory and other makers of the application Private Kit: Safe Paths have already overcome an iOS and Android interoperability issue that can make it possible. The application will make the coronavirus contact tracking app able to trace proximity with other people who uses the Bluetooth.
Private Kit: Safe Path
At present, Private Kit: Safe Path -MIT's coronavirus contact tracking app- logs location history using GPS for 28 days. When two devices running the app are in close proximity this app records the data with the help of Bluetooth.
Notifications are sent to people nearby when a person tests positive for COVID-19. Soon, Safe Paths will be able to share any occurrences of contact between two people that happened within 14 days.
The Private Kit: Safe Paths team is currently in talks with more than 30 different countries, including India, Italy, Germany, and Vietnam according to the project lead and MIT associate professor Ramesh Raskar.
According to an MIT spokesperson, the Private Kit pilots are already in progress in many countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, India, Haiti, and Ethiopia. Similarly, it is also underway in other five areas across the United States from Alaska to Los Angeles and near Boston.
Moreover, negotiations between the Private Kit: Safe Paths team and the World Health Organization, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are already ongoing.
Read: How Safe is the COVID-19 Lockdown App, Houseparty?
Interoperability issues
Interoperability has always been one of the issues that a Bluetooth proximity tracing app should solve before being considered a practical solution for recording occurrences when a person may contract the COVID-19.
The team said that the purpose of the app is to create a completely interoperable standards and they are expecting more apps to be based on the safe paths repository. So that anyone who travels from one country to another can still use the app since it will have the same base.
The app developers are also working with the makers of other Bluetooth tracking apps, including the COVID Watch to ensure that Bluetooth pings picked up by one app are also seen by other tracking apps.
Privacy concerns
According to Raskar, healthy people never have to share their data, but infected people can release their data anonymously and in an aggregated, and redacted fashion. The next version will be encrypted just the same.
If the Bluetooth contact tracing apps gain widespread adoption, this could be part of the way that some countries or regions can return to a normal life in a world without a cure for COVID-19, the makers said.
Creators of the Private Kit: Safe Paths intended to act as proof of concept to Apple and Google that the application is feasible for them to implement as they have a critical role in the success of this project.
Recently, senators have questioned the two mobile operating system giants -Apple and Google- about privacy aspects of COVID-19 surveillance.
Safe Paths has been downloaded more than 10,000 times since the launch of its iOS and Android apps almost a month ago.
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