Real World Potential for Data Sharing

I’m sure that we’re all reading pages and pages of information related to the COVID19 crisis. One of the articles that caught my eye was the article describing patient 31 from South Korea. (https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html ) It seems that this individual has been characterized as a “super-spreader” who passed it (COVID19) to thousands of other people.” https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca. I was particularly interested in the patient’s timeline as they went about their routine.

That got me thinking about my recent travels, presentation, meetings and commutes. I know the number of cases in Canada remains low, but the uncertainty about propagation and lifespan for this novel illness remain. After GO Transit noted that one patient did indeed use public transit for a number of trips (https://torontostoreys.com/coronavirus-ttc-go-transit/ ) I started looking for info about the patterns/locations of Canada’s COVID cases. Alas, I was not successful. Being me, I immediately thought that this would a fantastic case for Open Data.

Looking down at my Pixel2, I am reminded of the comprehensive location history (https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6258979?hl=en&ref_topic=3092425 ). What if public health workers could collect an anonymized location history from the phones of positive COVID19 cases and publish this history to a shareable repository? My device/app could look at my location history and correlate it with any intersections to those in the repository. The results displayed to me could simply assert that there were intersections, or it could go further to assert on this day and time I was at risk. It could go further to propose self-isolation and even report back to public health that I was out there and contacted. Yes, not everyone has location history turned on. Yes location history won’t tell me that the patient sat beside me and didn’t cough. Yes, yes and yes. There are any number of considerations, but if we are going to see the utility of Data Sharing (more on that in an upcoming paper by myself and @Omar Rashid ) we need to think about the real world, positive uses cases that can help. 

Yesterday, the President of the United States noted that 1700 engineers were working on a website to help triage individuals for COVID testing. Wouldn’t it be great if this correlation was a feature?