Once established and distributed, automated systems such as these could not only cut back on that burden, but also notify officials of incidental contact that the infected individual might not recall or even be aware of.“In order for the U.S. to really contain this epidemic, we need to have a much more proactive approach that allows us to trace more widely contacts for confirmed cases," Dr. Louise Ivers, executive director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health and an advisor on the project, told MIT's communications outlet. Of note, the system also keeps track of the approximate distance between each individual's device and that of their contact, as well as a rough estimate of the time they spent in range of the chirps.“I keep track of what I’ve broadcasted, and you keep track of what you’ve heard, and this will allow us to tell if someone was in close proximity to an infected person,” Ron Rivest, an MIT Institute Professor and principal investigator of the PACT project, told the institution's communications outlet, Once launched, participants will be able to download and join the effort "in a number of ways," according to Manual contact-tracing is a labor-intensive task for any public health organization, let alone one overwhelmed by the magnitude of COVID-19. For instance, former FDA Comissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb floated the idea of GPS tracking on cellphone apps to ensure home isolation as a potential component of a robust coronavirus response But the privacy and effectiveness debate hasn't stopped big tech from repurposing the data it's already collecting to help combat the disease. If a user is diagnosed with COVID-19 by a healthcare professional, they would receive a QR code that notifies a cloud system of their status and uploads their list of received chirps.All other participants in the system would be able to initiate a scan of the collective logs at any time through their own app and, if any of their outbound chirps match an instance stored in the cloud, would be warned of a potential (but still anonymous) COVID-19 contact. A research effort based out of MIT is looking to individuals' smartphones as tools for automatic COVID-19 contact tracing, but it's taking a unique approach that doesn't log GPS data or other potentially identifying information.By downloading a PACT app, individuals enable their phone to continuously send out these random data strings and keep a log of those from other participating devices it has encountered. PACT is a technical standard/specification that anyone can deploy on any smartphone. And second, the technology must be available across all smartphone platforms to assure broad and equitable deployment.Therefore, MIT is leading effort with partners around the world to develop an open, interoperable, privacy-preserving protocol which we call PACT, Private Automated Contact Tracing. Developing proximity data sets and models based on Bluetooth RF phenomenology and public health guidance. Designing, demonstrating, and refining systems that are private and secure by design.2. Monitoring the implementation of systems built atop these best practices.3.

The pact … (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch)© 2020 MobiHealthNews is a publication of HIMSS MediaThe latest news in digital health delivered daily to your inbox.The in-development system foregoes GPS tracking and other identifying data collection methods in its effort to automate labor-intensive COVID-19 contact tracing.
Private Automated Contact Tracing, or PACT, is designed to let people figure out if they've been near others who've caught COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Users that are part of the PACT will have the confidence to know that they are getting accurate information, that they are contributing to their community’s effort to limit the spread of COVID-19, and that their privacy is protected in the process.Our team at MIT, working with partners from around the world, has developed a system for identifying people at risk of infecting COVID-19, by using the Bluetooth signals that our cell phones send each other. "This automated and privacy-protecting approach could really transform our ability to get the epidemic under control here and could be adapted to have use in other global settings.”But the particular appeal of PACT over several other automated contact-tracing or behavior-tracking projects is the minimal amount of data collection it requires.