![handshaker mobile phone application handshaker mobile phone application](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/white-black-american-people-shaking-hands-computer-mobile-phone-screens-handshake-partnership-white-black-186514779.jpg)
But several other European countries are pursuing their own apps. In Europe, for example, a German-led effort is aiming to rally other European countries behind a technology platform that could support contact tracing apps across the 27-member EU. Meanwhile, dozens of efforts to develop contact tracing apps are underway around the world, many led by government research institutes and health authorities. China is employing a range of app-based tracking systems. South Korea is using mobile phone location data for contact tracing, while Taiwan uses it for quarantine enforcement and is also developing an app.
#Handshaker mobile phone application Bluetooth#
Singapore pioneered contact tracing via Bluetooth with an app called “TraceTogether.” Israel, which made headlines by employing its powerful government surveillance system to track cases, has also rolled out an app called The Shield. ARE ANY OF THESE METHODS CURRENTLY IN USE? But developers have been working on ways to better define “contacts” based on the length and strength of so-called handshakes between devices.īluetooth also remains more accurate than GPS or cell tower location data, which can wrongly associate everyone on a busy city block as contacts. Phones can log one another even when 15 feet apart or on separate sides of a wall, even though a cough from an infected person likely would not be problematic in those cases.
![handshaker mobile phone application handshaker mobile phone application](https://img.freepik.com/premium-vector/mobile-app-marketing-facebook-cover-photo-template-taxi-phone-app-social-media-timeline-banner_162279-428.jpg)
The Bluetooth solution is far from perfect. In principle, this system is more efficient than traditional contact tracing methods that require large staffs to interview patients about their travels and then call or knock on the doors of contacts. Phones on the list would get push notifications urging them to get tested or self-isolate. If someone becomes infected, there is a ready list of their prior encounters. Using Bluetooth, smartphones can log other phones they have been near. HOW CAN PHONES HELP WITH CONTACT TRACING? Smartphones can also be used to take surveys of people about their health via messaging, record their health histories via various forms of data entry and even produce a health “score” based on a combination of location information and health data. It can also be used for contact tracing: determining whether people have been in contact with others who have the virus, so they can get tested or quarantined. The location data can be used to monitor whether people, either individually or in aggregate, are obeying orders to stay inside their homes. Smartphones also use so-called Bluetooth technology to connect with nearby devices. Smartphones and some less-sophisticated mobile phones keep track of their location via cell-tower signals, Wi-Fi signals and the satellite-based global positioning system, known as GPS. HOW CAN MOBILE PHONES HELP COMBAT THE NEW CORONAVIRUS?
![handshaker mobile phone application handshaker mobile phone application](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ivan-Sanchez-Milara/publication/220142061/figure/fig12/AS:668488263798789@1536391430153/User-making-a-handshake-a-interacting-with-a-wall-display-b-and-a-tag-c_Q320.jpg)
#Handshaker mobile phone application software#
The process known as "contact tracing," which is used to control the spread of infectious diseases, was boosted last week when the top two smartphone software makers, Alphabet Inc's Google GOOGL.O and Apple Inc AAPL.O, said they were collaborating on apps that can identify people who have crossed paths with a contagious patient and alert them. Alissa Eckert, MS Dan Higgins, MAM/CDC/Handout via REUTERS FILE PHOTO: The ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China, is seen in an illustration released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.