Andy Moss
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Personal-symptom trackers, digital contact-tracing and exposure-notification tools are under development in the United States and around the world — their adoption could help healthcare workers mitigate the impact of further waves of COVID-19. These technologies also have significant privacy and security issues. The COVID Tech Task Force has a conference scheduled in 10 days to discuss the key issues related to COVID technologies.
As part of our work preparing for that conference, we collected and reviewed the leading apps in the U.S. With the goal of helping the public, and state and local governments, better understand the privacy and security features of leading applications, we’re sharing the information and demos we gathered from the teams building these applications.
We have sorted the demos into three broad categories: (1) contact-tracing/exposure-notification applications using Google/Apple API, (2) contact-tracing/exposure-notification applications not using Google/Apple API, and (3) personal-symptom-tracking applications.
We surveyed teams regarding privacy, security and commercialization of personal data. We’ve made the results of the surveys available here. We encourage you to look through the responses and share your thoughts on how different applications have approached these important issues.
The applications featured in this article were to be demoed at the Contact Tracing and Technology Conference originally scheduled for this week — in light of the significant conversations around racial injustice and police brutality against Black Americans we rescheduled it to ensure we are not taking up unnecessary space. The conference is now rescheduled or June 17th — if you RSVP’d, we look forward to seeing you there; if you haven’t, please do!
The conference will be hosted by the COVID Tech Task Force, in collaboration with TechCrunch, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, NYU’s Alliance for Public Interest Technology, Betaworks Studios and Hangar. The COVID Tech Task Force is composed of a group of volunteers who came together in March to help convene a forum for state and local governments and the tech community to work together to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.
If you’ve built a contact-tracing or exposure-notification application, please feel free to reach out to partners@crttf.org and fill out the survey here.
Applications using Google/Apple API
Google and Apple have collaborated to create development tools in order to provide a cross-platform way for public health agencies to notify individuals of a potential exposure.
COVID SafePaths
SafePaths is developing free, open-source, privacy-by-design tools for individuals, public health officials and larger communities to flatten the curve of COVID-19, reduce fear and prevent a surveillance-state response to the pandemic.
If you want further information, reach out to info@pathcheck.org.
CoEpi
CoEpi is an open-source project developing a decentralized, privacy-first app for anonymous Bluetooth-based exposure notification based on symptom sharing. Communities of close contacts can begin protecting themselves with CoEpi without requiring widespread adoption among the general population; there is no scale required to achieve benefit to small user groups. CoEpi helps you anonymously alert the people with whom you interact about symptoms of a contagious illness, or alert you if you might have been exposed in an interaction.
If you want further information, reach out to Dana+CoEpi@OpenAPS.org.
COVID Shield
COVID Shield is a free exposure notification solution built with privacy as its top priority. It was built by a group of volunteers, many from Shopify, in order to help Canadians and the rest of the world safely return to work.
If you want further information, reach out to press@covidshield.app.
CovidSafe
The team consists of a group of public health officials, doctors, researchers and engineers based out of the University of Washington and Microsoft who are working together to keep the public safe and to help public health systems in managing the outbreak.
If you want further information, reach out to covidsafe@uw.edu.
COVID Trace
COVID Trace is a nonprofit offering a COVID-19 exposure-notification app for iOS and Android using the Apple/Google exposure-notification APIs. People using COVID Trace can expect privacy and simplicity. With COVID Trace, health departments get an app and metrics that are an extension of their efforts. COVID Trace is ready to be used today.
If you want further information, reach out to hello@covidtrace.com.
Zero
Zero is a citizen-led nonprofit that leverages technology for pandemic response, focused on facilitating safe social behavior and peace of mind. Their goal is to stem the spread of COVID-19 and give citizens the information they need to feel safe and confident engaging with their local economy.
If you want further information, reach out to support@usezero.org.
Covid Watch
Founded in February by researchers from Stanford and Waterloo, Covid Watch is an open source nonprofit team of 500+ privacy and public health researchers, developers, volunteers, and academic advisers. Covid Watch developed the groundbreaking, fully anonymous TCN protocol, which later influenced the GAEN protocol it now uses. Covid Watch is actively working with universities and public health departments to integrate the Covid Watch app and customizable verification portal with public health systems, preserving the anonymity of app users.
If you want further information, reach out to contact@covid-watch.org.
Applications not currently using Google/Apple API
Note that some of these organizations have indicated they might use the Google/Apple API in the future. Some of them intend to and are waiting on confirmation from Google/Apple.
NOVID
NOVID claims to be the first (and currently only) completely anonymous contact-tracing app published in the USA that uses no personal information. No GPS, no phone number, no email — it’s completely anonymous. The app utilizes ultrasound to provide extremely accurate measurements of interaction distance, overcoming the known inaccuracies of Bluetooth. The team is led by Carnegie Mellon professor and internationally renowned mathematician, Po-Shen Loh.
If you want further information, reach out to feedback@novid.org.
Healthy Together
Healthy Together is an end-to-end COVID-19 response platform that is fully integrated into public health and the enterprise. Launched in April for the State of Utah, Healthy Together’s mobile applications support self-assessment, COVID-19 testing access and results, and augmented contact tracing, as well as enterprise contact tracing, workflow tools, data integrations and visualizations. Leveraging existing technology that has scaled to millions of users and informed by public health experts, Healthy Together will soon be announcing additional states and enterprise customers that are using the platform to protect the health of residents and employees.
If you want further information, reach out to info@healthytogether.io.
Sharetrace
Sharetrace is a health passport and contact-tracing application that’s privacy-preserving by design. Built on user-owned personal data accounts, pioneering personal data privacy technology, it can safely use sensitive data without the risk of sovereign surveillance by either companies or governments. Sharetrace is a collaboration between U.K. and U.S. universities, including Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Learn more online at sharetrace.org.
If you want further information, reach out to jonathan.holtby@dataswift.io.
Coalition App
Coalition App is a global, privacy-by-design contact tracing app that leverages secure Bluetooth and cryptography to notify users of potential COVID-19 exposure. It was created by the team behind Nodle.io and FireChat, plus a few independents, and built using the open source Whisper Tracing Protocol—peer reviewed by cryptographers at MIT, Stanford, USC and Oxford—and recently adopted by the Government of Senegal. Coalition’s Bluetooth technology and expertise is being leveraged by the Government of France.
If you want further information, reach out to micha@coalitionnetwork.org.
Safe2
Safe2 is a COVID-19 exposure warning system for smarter social distancing. The mobile app uses anonymized data from GPS and Bluetooth technology to privately share real-time exposure alerts to help prevent community spread of the virus. Safe2 was founded by Jamison D. Day, Ph.D., data scientist and expert in disaster relief, with an international team specializing in global health, technology and crisis management, with a focus on improving health, economic well-being and privacy.
If you want further information, reach out to hello@safe2.org.
VIRI
VIRI is a contact-tracing platform driven by the ethos of privacy and anonymity, on a mission to allow cross-entity contact tracing without the need to share any personal identifying information. It can be incorporated into an existing enterprise app as an API seamlessly allowing compatibility between enterprises and institutions at a global scale while letting the entities adhere to various healthcare-data regulations. VIRI deploys a hybrid back-end architecture that leverages permissive blockchain technology.
If you want further information, reach out to sumit@viri.io.
Symptom Trackers
COVID Near You
COVID Near You, a crowdsourced COVID-19 symptom tracker, was created by epidemiologists and software developers within the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children’s Hospital. The Boston Children’s Hospital team has background and expertise in developing platforms in infectious disease surveillance, and provides technical capacity in building visualization-based tools for public health response efforts. The COVID Near You team aims to support public health surveillance measures of COVID-19 and conduct research using the self-reported data to better understand the impact of this disease across North America.
If you want further information, reach out to covidnearyou@healthmap.org.
How We Feel
How We Feel lets you self-report your age, sex, ZIP code and any health symptoms you experience. The app was built by an independent, nonprofit organization called The How We Feel Project. Their tech team includes Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, and a volunteer group of current and former Pinterest employees. They are working with scientists, doctors and public health professionals from leading institutions including, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
If you want further information, reach out to info@howwefeel.org.
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