Idrees Sheikh Mohammad, Nowostawski Mariusz, Jameel Roshan
Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjovik, Norway.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India.
JMIR Med Inform. 2021 Feb 9;9(2):e25245. doi: 10.2196/25245.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial global disturbance by affecting more than 42 million people (as of the end of October 2020). Since there is no medication or vaccine available, the only way to combat it is to minimize transmission. Digital contact tracing is an effective technique that can be utilized for this purpose, as it eliminates the manual contact tracing process and could help in identifying and isolating affected people. However, users are reluctant to share their location and contact details due to concerns related to the privacy and security of their personal information, which affects its implementation and extensive adoption. Blockchain technology has been applied in various domains and has been proven to be an effective approach for handling data transactions securely, which makes it an ideal choice for digital contact tracing apps. The properties of blockchain such as time stamping and immutability of data may facilitate the retrieval of accurate information on the trail of the virus in a transparent manner, while data encryption assures the integrity of the information being provided. Furthermore, the anonymity of the user's identity alleviates some of the risks related to privacy and confidentiality concerns. In this paper, we provide readers with a detailed discussion on the digital contact tracing mechanism and outline the apps developed so far to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we present the possible risks, issues, and challenges associated with the available contact tracing apps and analyze how the adoption of a blockchain-based decentralized network for handling the app could provide users with privacy-preserving contact tracing without compromising performance and efficiency.
截至2020年10月底，新冠疫情已影响超过4200万人，给全球带来了巨大干扰。由于尚无可用药物或疫苗，抗击疫情的唯一办法是尽量减少传播。数字接触者追踪是一种可用于此目的的有效技术，因为它省去了人工接触者追踪过程，有助于识别和隔离感染者。然而，由于担心个人信息的隐私和安全问题，用户不愿分享自己的位置和联系方式，这影响了该技术的实施和广泛应用。区块链技术已应用于多个领域，并被证明是安全处理数据交易的有效方法，这使其成为数字接触者追踪应用程序的理想选择。区块链的时间戳和数据不可变等特性，可能有助于以透明方式检索病毒传播路径上的准确信息，同时数据加密可确保所提供信息的完整性。此外，用户身份的匿名性减轻了一些与隐私和保密问题相关的风险。在本文中，我们向读者详细讨论数字接触者追踪机制，并概述迄今为抗击新冠疫情而开发的应用程序。此外，我们介绍了现有接触者追踪应用程序可能存在的风险、问题和挑战，并分析采用基于区块链的去中心化网络来处理该应用程序如何能在不影响性能和效率的情况下为用户提供保护隐私的接触者追踪。
