European countries form coalition over contact tracing app concerns
Several European countries, including Switzerland and Germany, are demanding all user data generated by coronavirus contact tracing apps be stored on-device, rather than aggregated on a centralized server.
With talk of lifting border restrictions taking place, European countries begin voicing their concerns over the ethical deployment of contact tracing apps. A new coalition led by Switzerland and backed by countries like Germany, Austria, Finland, and Italy, is concerned that contact tracing apps could be used to spy on citizens. They argue that data should be stored locally on a user's device, rather than held by government health officials.
This approach dovetails with the goals and implementations provided through Apple and Google Exposure Notification project. Apple and Google's API uses Bluetooth tracking tokens stored on a user's device to alert them when they've come in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
The coalition has laid out a roadmap to enable national apps to exchange data and handle infections when people travel abroad. The primary goal is to help countries create a decentralized system that can still accurately alert those who may have been exposed to the virus.
The document states that everything must take place on a user's device, from generating identifiers to computing risk of exposure. They also clarify that any apps should be limited to distributing COVID-positive data, and not broadcast any information of those who have not tested positive.
"Everything about these projects has from Day One been about how we can make it work on an international level," Marcel Salathe, a digital epidemiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, told Reuters.
However, both the U.K. and France argue that citizens should trust health authorities to hold the information on a central computer server. The U.K.'s National Health Service announced that they would utilize their own centralized contract-tracing system, rather than deploying the exposure notification technology being developed by Apple and Google.
Australia has taken a similar approach to user data, giving users the option to upload their health data to a web server owned by Amazon Web Services.
With talk of lifting border restrictions taking place, European countries begin voicing their concerns over the ethical deployment of contact tracing apps. A new coalition led by Switzerland and backed by countries like Germany, Austria, Finland, and Italy, is concerned that contact tracing apps could be used to spy on citizens. They argue that data should be stored locally on a user's device, rather than held by government health officials.
This approach dovetails with the goals and implementations provided through Apple and Google Exposure Notification project. Apple and Google's API uses Bluetooth tracking tokens stored on a user's device to alert them when they've come in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
The coalition has laid out a roadmap to enable national apps to exchange data and handle infections when people travel abroad. The primary goal is to help countries create a decentralized system that can still accurately alert those who may have been exposed to the virus.
The document states that everything must take place on a user's device, from generating identifiers to computing risk of exposure. They also clarify that any apps should be limited to distributing COVID-positive data, and not broadcast any information of those who have not tested positive.
"Everything about these projects has from Day One been about how we can make it work on an international level," Marcel Salathe, a digital epidemiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, told Reuters.
However, both the U.K. and France argue that citizens should trust health authorities to hold the information on a central computer server. The U.K.'s National Health Service announced that they would utilize their own centralized contract-tracing system, rather than deploying the exposure notification technology being developed by Apple and Google.
Australia has taken a similar approach to user data, giving users the option to upload their health data to a web server owned by Amazon Web Services.
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Edit: nevermind, I was thinking they didn't want to share data. Obviously a central server is required once someone is found to be sick. It just doesn't "store" the data.
What incredible arrogance is on display here: building an app and hoping Apple/Google will rush a patch to make the app work as intended. Worse is then to criticise these tech companies for not capitulating, when a better set of frameworks are available for their use.
"We reviewed research articles published within the last decade that used digital data to answer epidemiological research questions. Data were abstracted from these articles using a data collection tool that we developed. Finally, we summarized the characteristics of the digital epidemiological studies."
Sounds to me like a normal progression into studying medical information. In other words, just a new term for finding information using digital technologies. Should be good for an extra zero on your paycheck.
"The term digital epidemiology was defined by Marcel Salathé as epidemiology that uses data that was generated outside the public health system, i.e., with data that was not generated with the primary purpose of doing epidemiology (Salathé 2018; Eckmanns et al. 2019)."
Ok. that particular sentence highlighted by Google isn't particularly helpful, but you can read the whole article:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322254109_Digital_epidemiology_what_is_it_and_where_is_it_going
It's not a bureaucratic term - it's more of a job title in a particular research discipline.
WHO and the CDC, and other nations versions of our CDC are constantly monitoring for Influenza A and Influenza B. Other agencies monitor farming operations for diseases, food processing plants (by law). Now, they will likely be monitoring for coronaviruses also, since SARS-Cov-2 is the first coronavirus that has become a pandemic. There is international monitoring for Ebola, polio, smallpox, HIV, Zika. Symptoms of all kinds are making their way into formal and informal data collections to help detect new diseases, and localized, regional outbreaks.
Data is collected world-wide for demographic information like base death rate, birth rate, gender, age, economic output of all sorts -- not just the stock market. The St. Louis Federal Reserve maintains and analyzes 800,000+ separate databases of economic activities; the New York Fed does the same for international trade. All banking transactions are monitored for fraudulent transfers and to prevent the same dollar from being spent twice.
Correct. If the infected user chooses to upload their results, then it does go to a central database held by the app developer (health institution). This would then allow any other opt-in devices to query that database and look for any matches. The use of a single API/system would enable the sharing of positive "hits" across institutions and borders as that "hit" (token/data) would be unique across all applications that used that API.
The Apple/Google API restricts an uploaded positive to be completely anonymous (basically just a random token), but that doesn't prohibit individual apps from asking users to send other data, if the user opts-in. However, I wouldn't be surprised if that data could not be tied to the random token and must be stored in a completely separate database.
A Spanish company has been monitoring sewage transport systems in areas of Valencia for the last three years, mainly to detect the presence of certain viruses in fecal matter in the sewage system and prior to processing at water treatment plants.
Checking for genetic elements and using big data, the setup acts as a sectorised early warning and tracking system and this morning they officially unveiled the inclusion of testing for the virus which causes COVID-19. In testing they claim it can detect the presence of the virus up to 16 days before the first case is identified.
There are other similar projects around Europe (and the rest of the world, I suppose) but it shows how tracing systems can play a part in detecting and tracking outbreaks. Pulling all the data together helps to see the bigger picture once everything is interconnected and analysed.
For those who can understand Spanish:
https://actualidad.globalomnium.com/global-omnium-hara-analisis-en-las-aguas-residuales-para-detectar-el-covid-19/