The COVID alert app is based on the Google-Apple exposure notification API (GAEN API), a functionality that the tech companies rolled out in April 2020. The Canadian government built an app around the GAEN API, which became the COVID alert app, and managed the system for uploading positive cases. The COVID alert app tracks the contacts an individual has by virtually pinging the smartphones of those around them.
The innovation in the add-on the researchers developed is to use the app to target vaccinations. Instead of targeting specific geographies or demographic groups, the researchers propose a strategy based on individual contacts.
“Digital contact tracing apps can be a simple way to optimize vaccination strategies without people having to give up private information,” said Mark Penney, a researcher in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo.
Penney and co-authors recently released a research study showing that such a strategy would almost half the number of vaccines required to bring the pandemic under control.
The research paper, “Hot-spotting’ to improve vaccine allocation by harnessing digital contact tracing technology: an application of percolation theory,” with co-authors Yigit Yargic, Lee Smolin, Edward W. Thommes, Madhur Anand and Chris T. Bauch, was published in the journal PLoS ONE.
Read more in the media release on Waterloo News.