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MIT Researchers Launch Location-Tracking Effort for the New Coronavirus


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Tracking contacts back to the source of an infection.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers and partner organizations have launched a project to track COVID-19 patients through their phones, requiring infected and uninfected volunteers to download the app.

Credit: medpagetoday.com

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers and partner organizations have launched a project to track COVID-19 patients through their phones, requiring infected and uninfected volunteers to download the Private Kit application.

The app asks both people confirmed to have COVID-19 and non-infected individuals to upload their recent travel from Google location services, and once new users join, they must log their locations and can view "hot spots" from other aggregated data uploaded to Private Kit.

The app alerts users if they are near someone who has been infected, while the collected data is scrambled to keep users' identities confidential.

The researchers are collaborating with major technology companies and healthcare systems to aggregate as much data as possible.

From The Wall Street Journal
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Abstracts Copyright © 2020 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA


 

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