Learn more about how your company can participate here. IDEO’s social innovation platform, OpenIDEO, is soliciting proposals from businesses who can battle the virus in three ways: meeting demands for protective supplies, meeting needs for new services, and adapting to a new future. In case you missed it, Fortune is partnering with IDEO, the global design consultancy, on a three-week “COVID-19 Business Pivot Challenge” to encourage companies to think creatively about how their organization can share their ideas, expertise and resources. More on this question in the forthcoming issue of Fortune magazine. But what does seem clear, to me at least, is that China’s system slowed the spread of the virus not only because it digitized contact tracing but also because it proved a powerful tool for enforcing citywide lockdowns. The workings of China’s health tracking apps remain opaque. Residents lacking green badges could be denied entry to shops, apartment compounds, and commercial buildings. But in cities like Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, the color-codes were used in conjunction with an elaborate network of security checkpoints. In theory, China’s tracking apps are voluntary in that users can choose whether or not to download them. The apps’ algorithms assign users a colored QR code to flash on their phones: A green code grants unrestricted movement yellow and red codes require users to remain in quarantine for seven and 14 days respectively. Users then submit to a questionnaire about recent movements, personal health, and whether anyone they have been in contact with has been infected. Registration requires surrendering personal information such as national identity card numbers and home addresses. Though the apps were rolled out by tech giants Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, who embedded them on their mobile payment platforms, the companies insist they have no control over the algorithms and no access to the data they collect. But as The Verge points out, those features might be bugs if not enough users opt in.Ĭhina’s health tracking system is state-led and far more coercive. The system was developed without government involvement, and is designed to be voluntary, decentralized, and anonymous. If someone who registered for the tool were to test positive for the coronavirus and choose to report that, the app would notify a public health app, which would then alert the phones that had come close enough to risk possible exposure. Bluetooth will track whether phones have passed within a certain distance of one another. Google and Apple’s forthcoming technology is said to take a minimalist approach. The more complicated question is how intrusive these systems must be to prove effective. They seem to broadly agree that smartphones, if paired with the right technology, can help automate the vital process of contact tracing, relieving the enormous strain of attempting to gather such information manually. Global health experts generally credit the use of apps in all four Asian nations for “flattening the curve” of new infections. The most sweeping use of smartphones has been in China, where hundreds of municipal and provincial governments, under orders from Beijing, deployed color-coded “health tracking” systems that combine artificial intelligence, government records, user-supplied personal health and transportation information, and GPS signals to identify and restrict the movements of residents at risk of infection. Singapore deployed a Bluetooth-powered “TraceTogether” app that allows authorities to track infected individuals and those who might have been exposed to them. Hong Kong monitors quarantined patients with a “geo-fencing” app that works on an electronic wristband. South Korea developed an app that shows smartphone users how close they are to an area that a confirmed COVID-19 patient has visited. Here in Asia, where I’m based, governments have been using smartphone apps to contain the virus for more than a month now. The Wall Street Journal hailed the companies’ proposal as “the most concrete technological solution to date for governmental authorities searching for ways to at least partially lift the lockdown orders that have swept the nation.” Apple and Google announced on Friday a collaboration to design an app that will alert users if they have been in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus.
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