COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Mobile Apps: Evaluation and Assessment for Decision Makers
It addresses a practical problem for officials and citizens during the COVID-19 crisis, offering guidance but is incremental as it builds on existing app development efforts.
The paper tackles the challenge of evaluating diverse contact-tracing mobile apps for COVID-19, providing a framework of questions to help decision-makers assess and differentiate between options.
A number of groups, from governments to non-profits, have quickly acted to innovate the contact-tracing process: they are designing, building, and launching contact-tracing apps in response to the COVID-19 crisis. A diverse range of approaches exist, creating challenging choices for officials looking to implement contact-tracing technology in their community and raising concerns about these choices among citizens asked to participate in contact tracing. We are frequently asked how to evaluate and differentiate between the options for contact-tracing applications. Here, we share the questions we ask about app features and plans when reviewing the many contact-tracing apps appearing on the global stage.