Study: Smartphone Apps aid in Tracking and Reporting COVID-19

The widespread use of various smartphone apps launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, most notably contact-tracing applications, can be seen as a positive development.However, more research must be done to determine how these technologies can be refined for future use cases. This was the key conclusion of a review paper published in Nature Biotechnology, whose authors said that, despite patient privacy and data security concerns, the apps were beneficial to contact tracing, individual screening and a general understanding of outbreak epidemiology. Contact tracing, the most commonly used COVID-19-related smartphone app function, was cited by the paper as having the most serious data privacy issues. “The ideal contact-tracing app would work in real time, preserve data privacy, comply with local regulations, lead to actionable and measurable outcomes, be on local devices to avoid bandwidth issues and, for public health purposes, not require opting in,” the report recommended.