Managing a pandemic – An alternative to smartphone contact tracing apps

The news of smartphone contact tracing app finally being launched dominated the German media in the past few days. The goal of this article is not to review the German application, but to try to explain a simple concept which could be used instead of, or in addition to, smartphone contact tracing apps.

The idea behind smartphone contact tracing apps is to inform people who have been in contact with someone who got infected and tested positively for the virus. The question is, can people who are at risk be notified differently, without the use of tracing apps.

Before introducing the alternative concept, here are some initial assumptions. First, some restrictions in a pandemic probably can’t be avoided. Social distancing, wearing face masks or avoiding unnecessary travel are measures we’ll have to accept. Besides, we may have to restrict many of the non-essential activities (indoor sports, restaurants visits etc.)

The second assumption is that we want to avoid shutting down entire companies, universities, institutes and keep them operating as best as possible.

In a resulting situation with all non-essential activities reduced and the essential ones kept, if you get infected, we need to inform the people who spent time in your vicinity. But how can we know where you have been without tracking you?

The short answer is: we don’t need to know all the locations. We only need those where you spend most of your time and are most likely to infect others. In a partial shut-down, there are two places where you spend most of your time – your home and your workplace.

If you get infected, it is obvious you will let your family or flatmates know. We do not need an application for that. That leaves us with the issue of informing your colleagues (keeping privacy in mind if needed) that someone they work with tested positive.

Hierarchical mapping of internal organizational structures

The solution comes in the form of digital organigrams – tree likes structures which depict internal structure in organizations. Consider a research institute which consists of several departments and several research groups in each of the departments. Once you have the digital tree of the organization, populated with employees in a way that their position in the three reflects their physical location in the workplace, then the solution is simple. Every time an employee reports an infection, we know who should get notified and with what kind of instructions, because we know the position of the infected employee in the tree. For example, all employees working in the same research group as the infected individual could get a notification instructing them to stay at home for two weeks. Employees working in the same department may receive different instructions, while those in other departments might not receive a notification at all.

Using this approach, without having to shut down an entire organization, we could manage the pandemic more precisely. Also, it is not critical who reported a case of infection - the only information needed is that someone got infected and where that person works.

Life Science Network principles

The system described in this article relies on the same concepts which are used by this platform. The foundation of Life Science Network is a network of nodes, with each node representing a country, city, organization or organizational level. Each organization can have any number of organizational levels, both horizontally and vertically. In our case, content and members connect with nodes in a way that enables them to get informed about the most relevant content (such as jobs, events or research protocols) which gets shared on the platform. It is the content and content-based notifications which we send to people. In case of a pandemic management application, it would be pandemic related notifications and instructions.

In summary, although smartphone contact tracing apps exist, it remains open to what extent will those apps be useful in the fight against the current pandemic. Governments should consider alternative approaches, such as the one described here and others, to supplement the current strategy.

Cover image: Wikipedia.

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