Bluetooth was used in 10 (34%) apps for collecting data, 12 (41%) apps used GPS, and 12 (41%) used other forms of data collection.
There were 6 (21%) apps available on either Android or iOS, and 10 (34%) were available on both platforms. More than half (n=20, 69%) were from governmental sources, only 3 (10%) were from private organizations, and 3 (10%) from universities.
Among them, 15 (52%) apps were on contact tracing, 7 (24%) apps on quarantine, 7 (24%) on symptom monitoring, and 1 (3%) on information provision. Results: A total of 46 articles were reviewed from 19 countries, resulting in a total of 29 apps. Methods: Following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines for scoping reviews, literature searches were conducted on Google Search, Google Scholar, and PubMed using the country’s name as keywords and “coronavirus,” “COVID-19,” “nCOV19,” “contact tracing,” “information providing apps,” “symptom tracking,” “mobile apps,” “mobile applications,” “smartphone,” “mobile phone,” and “mHealth.” Countries most affected by COVID-19 and those that first rolled out COVID-19–related apps were included. Objective: Our aim is to scope the evidence base on apps that were developed in response to COVID-19.
However, there is no resource that provides a holistic picture of the available mHealth apps that have been developed to combat this pandemic. While digital contact tracing for COVID-19 remains in its infancy, the lack of consensus around best practices for its implementation and for reassuring citizens of the protection of their privacy may already have impeded its capacity to contribute to the pandemic response.īackground: Mobile health (mHealth) apps have played an important role in mitigating the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response. The lack of a consensus on privacy protection in the contact tracing process creates risks of non-compliance or deliberate obfuscation from citizens who fear revealing private aspects of their lives – a factor greatly exacerbated by recent major scandals over online privacy and the illicit use of citizens’ digital information, which have heightened public consciousness of these issues and created significant new challenges for any collection of large-scale public data. There is major divergence among nations, however, between a “privacy-first” approach which protects citizens’ data at the cost of extremely limited access for public health authorities and researchers, and a “data-first” approach which stores large amounts of data which, while of immeasurable value to epidemiologists and other researchers, may significantly intrude upon citizens’ privacy. The implementation of digital contact tracing applications around the world to help reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the most ambitious uses of massive-scale citizen data ever attempted.