A Review of the Aarogya Setu Digital Contact Tracing Mobile Application of the Government of India in Response to the Novel Corona Virus [COVID-19]: A Local and International Perspective

Abstract

This paper reviews the Government of India’s initiative to battle the Novel Coronavirus: the release of the ‘Aarogya Setu’ digital contact tracing technology mobile application in an epidemiological context with a purpose to increase awareness of the safety precautions required to stay safe as well as to inform the application users in case they have been in close interaction with a COVID positive patient in the past few days and advises them to take the necessary precautions if needed. The Aarogya Setu application helps to track the rapid cluster and community spread of COVID-19 in India and achieves this by utilising a client-server model-based architecture involving communication from a central government database to users’ devices using GPS and Bluetooth features for data collection and dissemination to devices.Other initiatives of digital contact tracing technologies are reviewed as well, most notably Google and Apple’s provision of an application programming interface to developers worldwide which allows data capture of interactions from users’ devices.Suggestions are given to monitor and improve the security of the application due to possible misuse of users’ data and hacking by cyber criminals. Privacy suggestions have been highlighted as well such as alternatives of removing location tracking via GPS while still providing the benefits of contact tracing by using Bluetooth. Mobile application development issues are suggested such as to allow users to add their personal risk factors such as co-morbidities to get a risk factor scale in their device locally to alert the user of their risk of infection of the novel coronavirus in case they were or have come in contact with people who tested positive while keeping the information private to the user. With the rapid advancements in technology, India has the potential to make their contact tracing application even better on a large scale with enhanced usage and efficacy going forward in the battle against COVID-19.