Baron Ruth, Hamdiui Nora, Helms Yannick B, Crutzen Rik, Götz Hannelore M, Stein Mart L
Centre for Infectious Disease Control, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, Netherlands.
Department of Health Promotion, Care and Public Health Research Institute, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
JMIR Res Protoc. 2023 Nov 29;12:e44728. doi: 10.2196/44728.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that with high infection rates, health services conducting contact tracing (CT) could become overburdened, leading to limited or incomplete CT. Digital CT support (DCTS) tools are designed to mimic traditional CT, by transferring a part of or all the tasks of CT into the hands of citizens. Besides saving time for health services, these tools may help to increase the number of contacts retrieved during the contact identification process, quantity and quality of contact details, and speed of the contact notification process. The added value of DCTS tools for CT is currently unknown.
To help determine whether DCTS tools could improve the effectiveness of CT, this study aims to develop a framework for the comprehensive assessment of these tools.
A framework containing evaluation topics, research questions, accompanying study designs, and methods was developed based on consultations with CT experts from municipal public health services and national public health authorities, complemented with scientific literature.
These efforts resulted in a framework aiming to assist with the assessment of the following aspects of CT: speed; comprehensiveness; effectiveness with regard to contact notification; positive case detection; potential workload reduction of public health professionals; demographics related to adoption and reach; and user experiences of public health professionals, index cases, and contacts.
This framework provides guidance for researchers and policy makers in designing their own evaluation studies, the findings of which can help determine how and the extent to which DCTS tools should be implemented as a CT strategy for future infectious disease outbreaks.
新冠疫情表明，在感染率较高的情况下，开展接触者追踪（CT）的卫生服务可能不堪重负，导致接触者追踪受限或不完整。数字接触者追踪支持（DCTS）工具旨在通过将部分或全部接触者追踪任务交给公民，来模拟传统的接触者追踪。除了为卫生服务节省时间外，这些工具可能有助于增加在接触者识别过程中找回的接触者数量、接触者详细信息的数量和质量，以及接触者通知过程的速度。DCTS工具对接触者追踪的附加价值目前尚不清楚。
为帮助确定DCTS工具是否能提高接触者追踪的有效性，本研究旨在开发一个全面评估这些工具的框架。
基于与市公共卫生服务机构和国家公共卫生当局的接触者追踪专家的磋商，并辅以科学文献，开发了一个包含评估主题、研究问题、配套研究设计和方法的框架。
这些努力产生了一个框架，旨在协助评估接触者追踪的以下方面：速度；全面性；接触者通知的有效性；阳性病例检测；公共卫生专业人员潜在工作量的减少；与采用和覆盖范围相关的人口统计学；以及公共卫生专业人员、索引病例和接触者的用户体验。
该框架为研究人员和政策制定者设计自己的评估研究提供了指导，研究结果有助于确定应如何以及在何种程度上实施DCTS工具作为未来传染病爆发的接触者追踪策略。
