Data privacy during pandemics: a systematic literature review of COVID-19 smartphone applications

Role of digital technology in epidemic control: a scoping review on COVID-19 and Ebola

OBJECTIVE

To synthesise the role of digital technologies in epidemic control and prevention, focussing on Ebola and COVID-19.

DESIGN

A scoping review.

DATA SOURCES

A systematic search was done on PubMed, HINARI, Web of Science, Google Scholar and a direct Google search until 10 September 2024.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

We included all qualitative and quantitative studies, conference papers or abstracts, anonymous reports, editorial reports and viewpoints published in English.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews checklist was used to select the included study. Data analysis was performed using Gale's framework thematic analysis method, resulting in the identification of key themes.

RESULTS

A total of 64 articles that examined the role of digital technology in the Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics were included in the final review. Five main themes emerged: digital epidemiological surveillance (using data visualisation tools and online sources for early disease detection), rapid case identification, community transmission prevention (via digital contact tracing and assessing interventions with mobility data), public education messages and clinical care. The identified barriers encompassed legal, ethical and privacy concerns, as well as organisational and workforce challenges.

CONCLUSION

Digital technologies have proven good for disease prevention and control during pandemics. While the adoption of these technologies has lagged in public health compared with other sectors, tools such as artificial intelligence, telehealth, wearable devices and data analytics offer significant potential to enhance epidemic responses. However, barriers to widespread implementation remain, and investments in digital infrastructure, training and strong data protection are needed to build trust among users. Future efforts should focus on integrating digital solutions into health systems, ensuring equitable access and addressing ethical concerns. As public health increasingly embraces digital innovations, collaboration among stakeholders will be crucial for effective pandemic preparedness and management.

Mobile Apps for COVID-19: A Systematic Review of Reviews

BACKGROUND

One measure national governments took to react to the acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic was mobile applications (apps). This study aims to provide a high-level overview of published reviews of mobile apps used in association with coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19), examine factors that contributed to the success of these apps, and provide data for further research into this topic.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic review of reviews (also referred to as an umbrella review) and searched two databases, Medline and Embase, for peer-reviewed reviews of COVID-19 mobile apps that were written in English and published between January 1st 2020 and April 25th 2022.

RESULTS

Out of the initial 17,611 studies, 24 studies were eligible for the analysis. Publication dates ranged from May 2020 to January 2022. In total, 54% (n = 13) of the studies were published in 2021, and 33% (n = 8) were published in 2020. Most reviews included in our review of reviews analyzed apps from the USA, the UK, and India. Apps from most of the African and Middle and South American countries were not analyzed in the reviews included in our study. Categorization resulted in four clusters (app overview, privacy and security, MARS rating, and miscellaneous).

CONCLUSIONS

Our study provides a high-level overview of 24 reviews of apps for COVID-19, identifies factors that contributed to the success of these apps, and identifies a gap in the current literature. The study provides data for further analyses and further research.

Ten Years of TeleHealth and Digital Healthcare: Where Are We?

Due to the development of the technological innovation of devices, availability of increasingly performing networks, improvement of the digitization processes, and the push to greater diffusion determined by the COVID-19 pandemic, Digital Healthcare (DH), also referred to as Digital Health [...]

The German COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing App: A Socioeconomic Evaluation

The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to governments in terms of contact tracing. Like many other countries, Germany introduced a mobile-phone-based digital contact tracing solution ("Corona Warn App"; CWA) in June 2020. At the time of its release, however, it was hard to assess how effective such a solution would be, and a political and societal debate arose regarding its efficiency, also in light of its high costs. This study aimed to analyze the effectiveness of the CWA, considering prevented infections, hospitalizations, intensive care treatments, and deaths. In addition, its efficiency was to be assessed from a monetary point of view, and factors with a significant influence on the effectiveness and efficiency of the CWA were to be determined. Mathematical and statistical modeling was used to calculate infection cases prevented by the CWA, along with the numbers of prevented complications (hospitalizations, intensive care treatments, deaths) using publicly available CWA download numbers and incidences over time. The monetized benefits of these prevented cases were quantified and offset against the costs incurred. Sensitivity analysis was used to identify factors critically influencing these parameters. Between June 2020 and April 2022, the CWA prevented 1.41 million infections, 17,200 hospitalizations, 4600 intensive care treatments, and 7200 deaths. After offsetting costs and benefits, the CWA had a net present value of EUR 765 m in April 2022. Both the effectiveness and efficiency of the CWA are decisively and disproportionately positively influenced by the highest possible adoption rate among the population and a high rate of positive infection test results shared via the CWA.

Enforcement of the Use of Digital Contact-Tracing Apps in a Common Law Jurisdiction

Digital contact-tracing systems have been widely implemented worldwide with different system designs and implementation policies for the purpose of tracking potentially exposed individuals. The use of a digital contact-tracing app in Hong Kong has been mandated for visiting certain premises by legislations. This paper reviewed the regulations promulgated specifically for the prevention and control of COVID-19 and identified those associated with the digital contact-tracing system. A comprehensive search in newspaper databases was performed to explore the enforcement of the mandated use of the digital contact-tracing app. The three facets of regulations in relation to digital contact tracing were examined: duty to disclose information, requirements and directions to businesses, and compulsory testing. The use of digital contact-tracing data for non-public health purposes was also reported. Our analyses showed that prosecution of non-use or the use of fraudulent digital contact-tracing apps was not limited to COVID-19-specific legislations. The flexible approach ensured the enforcement of the use of the digital contact-tracing app, but the judiciary’s test must be passed in future cases.

Group Privacy: An Underrated but Worth Studying Research Problem in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

Introduction: Recently, the tendency of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data use/applications is has been rapidly expanding across the globe, improving people’s lifestyles with data-driven services (i.e., recommendations, smart healthcare, etc.). The synergy between AI and big data has become imperative considering the drastic growth in personal data stemming from diverse sources (cloud computing, IoT, social networks, etc.). However, when data meet AI at some central place, it invites unimaginable privacy issues, and one of those issues is group privacy. Despite being the most significant problem, group privacy has not yet received the attention of the research community it is due. Problem Statement: We study how to preserve the privacy of particular groups (a community of people with some common attributes/properties) rather than an individual in personal data handling (i.e., sharing, aggregating, and/or performing analytics, etc.), especially when we talk about groups purposely made by two or more people (with clear group identifying markers), for whom we need to protect their privacy as a group. Aims/Objectives: With this technical letter, our aim is to introduce a new dimension of privacy (e.g., group privacy) from technical perspectives to the research community. The main objective is to advocate the possibility of group privacy breaches when big data meet AI in real-world scenarios. Methodology: We set a hypothesis that group privacy (extracting group-level information) is a genuine problem, and can likely occur when AI-based techniques meet high dimensional and large-scale datasets. To prove our hypothesis, we conducted a substantial number of experiments on two real-world benchmark datasets using AI techniques. Based on the experimental analysis, we found that the likelihood of privacy breaches occurring at the group level by using AI techniques is very high when data are sufficiently large. Apart from that, we tested the parameter effect of AI techniques and found that some parameters’ combinations can help to extract more and fine-grained data about groups. Findings: Based on experimental analysis, we found that vulnerability of group privacy can likely increase with the data size and capacity of the AI method. We found that some attributes of people can act as catalysts in compromising group privacy. We suggest that group privacy should also be given due attention as individual privacy is, and robust tools are imperative to restrict implications (i.e., biased decision making, denial of accommodation, hate speech, etc.) of group privacy. Significance of results: The obtained results are the first step towards responsible data science, and can pave the way to understanding the phenomenon of group privacy. Furthermore, the results contribute towards the protection of motives/goals/practices of minor communities in any society. Concluding statement: Due to the significant rise in digitation, privacy issues are mutating themselves. Hence, it is vital to quickly pinpoint emerging privacy threats and suggest practical remedies for them in order to mitigate their consequences on human beings.