Nepal Trace

Salient Features:

- Based on Bluetooth Low Energy, so energy efficient than using GPS based contact tracing.

- Can support offline/online mode. Data will be collected while offline too, which will be uploaded once the user goes online.

- Bluetooth based tracing is successfully used in countries such as Singapore.

- The bluetooth broadcasting is completely anonymized, so only relevant authorities can identify which identifier belongs to which user.

- Computationally tractable searching.

- Only collect minor GPS information during signup.

Advantages:

As evident in Singapore, South Korea, effective and rapid contact tracing is one of key factors in fighting Covid-19 pandemic. So, this app facilitates the following:

- Rapid Contact Assessment

- Easy Second-Degree Contact Tracing

- Redundancy Model. [If only a single device is working in the vicinity then tracing of other devices that are not completely operating [broadcasting but failed to listen due to OS activities, can be performed]

What is it?

Nepal Trace is a non-privacy-invasive, computationally tractable, contact tracing system. It is based on the bluetooth low energy protocol. A contact tracing system’s main objective is to facilitate health agencies in tracing out people who have been in close contact with the Covid-19 patient rapidly. This can aid the contact recall process very fast and effective.

How Does it Work?

Nepal Trace adopts a crowdsourcing approach where participating devices exchange proximity information whenever an app detects another device with the Nepal Trace app installed. The information is stored in the user’s device and is uploaded to the server when the user comes online.

If a person unfortunately falls ill with COVID-19, the responsible authorities will ask the user of the registered username and will get the list of all the person that the patient came in contact with their phone numbers. This will rapidly allow us to shortlist potential exposure candidates.