Alberta’s use of a smartphone app to help slow the spread of the coronavirus may provide other provinces with insight on what to do — and what to avoid — as Canada begins easing restrictions, heightening the need for effective contact tracing.
Alberta’s use of a smartphone app to help slow the spread of the coronavirus may provide other provinces with insight on what to do — and what to avoid — as Canada begins easing restrictions, heightening the need for effective contact tracing.
ABTraceTogether, launched late last week, is the first such app released by a provincial public health authority. An accompanying instructional video explains: “The more people who use the app, the safer everyone will be.”
Early uptake figures and a key design quirk, however, illustrate how challenging it will be to ensure widespread adoption and efficacy in Alberta and elsewhere.
Contact tracing is the practice of identifying and notifying people at risk of contracting the virus from someone known to have been infected. Anyone who came in close contact with that person is instructed to self-isolate to avoid spreading the virus further.
So far, tracing in Canada has been done manually, with public health staff or volunteers getting in touch with each patient’s recent contacts one by one. An app can speed up that process, and doesn’t require users to remember where they’ve been or, just as importantly, with whom.
“If there’s some way technology can help… we all want to get out of our houses,” said Richard Lachman, a digital technology and culture researcher at Ryerson University in Toronto. But he warned against treating the software as a “panacea.”
Alberta’s app employs Bluetooth technology to determine with whom a user has spent time (at least 15 minutes in a 24-hour period). But it only works if everyone involved has the app running on their phone and Bluetooth enabled.
Early hurdles
As of Tuesday, ABTraceTogether had been downloaded just over 120,000 times, Alberta Health spokesperson Tom McMillan told CBC News. If each download accounts for a new user, that makes up less than three per cent of the province’s population of around 4.4 million.
A group of British researchers suggested a similar app would only be effective if it were adopted by 56 per cent of the U.K.’s population.
McMillan declined to provide a target figure for Alberta, but said in an email, “Our goal is for as many Albertans to use it as possible.”
Even users who’ve installed the app may have trouble using it effectively. Those running Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS, are advised upon installation to “place your phone upside down or screen side down in your pocket” to keep their screen