Debunking Myths about Contact Tracing: Facedrive Health’s TraceSCAN
Facedrive Health offers solutions in the healthcare space. Being one of the Facedrive verticals, we prioritize doing business in an environmental and socially responsible manner. Given the impact of COVID around the world, we felt there was an opportunity to do more to help protect families and communities at home and around the world. In partnership with the University of Waterloo, Facedrive Health created a contact tracing solution called TraceSCAN to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Let’s begin by debunking some of the most common myths about TraceSCAN:
Myth #1: With Contact Tracing my Personal Data is at Risk
Facedrive Health makes it a priority to keep personal data private and designed TraceSCAN with a privacy focus. This device does not collect any personal information about the user, the only data that is gathered on the wearable device is the date, time, and serial number of the devices involved in an interaction. To ensure that there is no compromising of personal data, TraceSCAN has partnered with Microsoft Azure which securely stores the data to the cloud, this data can only be accessed and reviewed by the designated health and human resource administrators so they can properly identify exposed individuals. All data collected by TraceSCAN is encrypted and first authenticated before it is uploaded and then proceeds to be deleted from the device after each upload or 21 days.
Myth #2: TraceSCAN Tracks Your Location
Individuals are often confused as the name contact tracing creates a false narrative that this device is tracking your geographic location when this is simply not the case with TraceSCAN. Facedrive Health’s contact tracing device guarantees its users that their location will not be traced, because there is not GPS component on the device to permit this. What this device will be doing is using its low Bluetooth energy signals to sense other similar signals which allow the device to identify potentially exposed individuals.
Myth #3: TraceSCAN Floods Your Device with Alerts
As social media platforms are rapidly growing individuals are finding it very troublesome when their devices become consumed with notifications. With this being said some people have raised concerns that TraceSCAN will essentially do the same any time you break social distancing protocol, which is anything but the truth. What happens is when an individual is infected by COVID-19, the company using this device can easily identify potentially exposed individuals using the data collected. Then once your administrator has made a decision on who has been exposed, then they will communicate this information to you.
Myth #4: All TraceSCAN Does is Beep When People get Close to Eachother
Recently TraceSCAN has been referred to as the device that beeps when in reality this device is much more than that, as it is the ultimate solution to attaining a pre-covid society. Although this device does have the feature to create an audible tone when an individual breaks social distancing protocol it can easily be turned off and converted to vibrations. How these contact tracing devices work is that it communicates with the other wearables it encounters by exchanging information such as their unique Bluetooth IDs, time and distance information relating to the interaction, then the TraceSCAN wearable alerts the user in either vibration or a sound frequency. The device that beeps is the device that is being used by Pearson Airport.
Facedrive Health’s contact tracing device is the solution to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other future outbreaks. TraceSCAN is a technology that addresses today's COVID challenges and provides a profound contract tracing platform that can mitigate the risk of potential city-wide closures.
