Tracing infectious agents with mobile location information: A simple and effective countermeasure against epidemic risks
Takashi Okumura · 2019
The Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations request all countries to strengthen the capacity for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks. This study aims to reduce the risks caused by infectious agents by identifying individuals who accidentally come in close contact with affected patients, utilizing mobile location information. The proposed approach involves asking public health authorities to provide the trip data of patients to mobile carriers under a non-disclosure agreement. The carriers then determine the possible risks of contact of their mobile customers with patients and disclose only the risk information to their customers upon requests. This approach provides novel channels for public health authorities to announce the risk of contagious agents to residents, while maintaining the privacy of both the patients and residents. For a nationwide deployment of the proposed approach, several issues are discussed in this study, along with brief summaries of related studies.