JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Contact tracing has been a key part of the worldwide measure in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries across the globe have released their contact tracing application. This has resulted in the proliferation of several contact tracing applications that used a variety of technologies.

Objective:

This study analyses most of the COVID-19 Contact tracing apps in use today. Beyond investigating the privacy features, design, and implications of these apps, this research examines the underlying technologies used in contact tracing applications. It also attempts to provide some insights into their level of penetration and gauge their public reception.

Methods:

The research sampled 13 applications corresponding to 10 countries based on the underlying technology used. The selected applications were all free to download. The inclusion criteria also ensured that most COVID-19 declared epicentre (countries) were included in the sample, such as Italy. The sampled apps included also countries that relatively did well in controlling the outbreak of COVID-19 such as Singapore. Informational apps or un-official contact tracing apps were excluded from this study except for the South Korean app as this was amongst the first app launching globally. A brute force keyword search technique was used to scrap the reviews of each of the 13 apps under reviews.

Results:

The study identified seven distinct technologies used by or incorporated in COVID-19 tracing applications. In total 13 distinct applications were selected for this study.

Conclusions:

Contact tracing applications come with their own set of challenges as well. Key amongst these challenges is privacy. Of course, this is anticipated as you can’t expect to trace and track peoples’ movement by a government authority without addressing the privacy issues.