A thread about the future of preventative health in a post COVID-19 world:

What were emergent discussions on technology playing a key role have now taken stage. Going forward, ‘Proof of Health’ is critically important—for all of society’s collective future. 1/23

Today, Estimote launched a platform to ‘contact trace’ workplace interactions between people who are critical members of their communities and their companies. https://estimote.com/wearable/  2/23

Contact tracing, and diagnostics tech (mobile, sensors, wearables) have evolved differently in different countries. 3 months ago was the time to have infrastructure to truly contain the virus. We are now past containment globally. Only pockets within Asia have succeeded. 3/23

Without immediate aggressive measures: masks, tracing & testing, we will not resume our lives, and the virus will impact lives beyond measure. This is what we’re battling now. But where do we go next? How will technology help us reform concentric circles of trust in society? 4/23

To solve this we need public & private sector to unite. Smaller tech co’s will move the fastest, Apple & Google will move ‘sort of’ fast (next 2-4 mos), and Government will move slowest, 6-9 mos. Be wary of “vanity launches” in tech! e.g. what’s happened with testing in US. 5/23

Benchmarks: Asian countries have had success (HK, Singapore, SK) with “course-grain” diagnostics measures using mobile devices to flag potential exposure & alert people to avoid hot zones. 6/23

The most notable and applauded is TraceTogether, who in Singapore achieved about 20% population penetration one week after launch, or about 1 million users. But that’s probably not enough. And how do we share between countries / apps? 7/23

Proof of Health needs to be portable and tied to identity, securely. Antibody serum testing methods will enable those recovered from Covid-19 to resume travel and work first. 8/23

Eventually.. to fly to Germany in 12 months, you’ll verify immunity when you buy a plane ticket on Lufthansa. A lot of nationalization toward protection and safety along that arc before we “restart”. 9/23

Mobile apps for tracing in isolation do not solve US/EU (not contained), require consent or forced usage. But less discussed / understood: mobile phone OS’s also don’t do background Bluetooth tracing well at all - won’t capture 100% of background interactions... so: 10/23

Apple will almost certainly soon announce a way for developers to ‘access’ anonymized location data, with hopefully Google & Apple announcing cross sharing of this between iOS and Android, desired security and anonymity achieved - next 3 months. 11/23

Data will be handled in the Secure Enclave as an open extension of FindMy. Expose this to devs like TraceTogether as a kit. This will all take time. Imagine how long any app & platform work takes. Even if we collectively move 5x faster, we can’t wait. 12/23

People who are critical to the economy need to work. We all want to curb the societal costs imposed by social distancing interventions. But it’s clear interventions at work can curb spread (80-90%+ of time is now spent at work / home). 13/23

Containing workforce outbreaks and tracing interactions at work first can enable us to keep areas of the economy open (food, medicine, distribution, healthcare, first response). 14/23

Estimote’s aim is to give employers a way to keep a pulse around community transmission in their workforces and prevent spread. To succeed with workforce containment will require: 15/23

Trace: our solutions (pre virus) for ‘panic-buttons’ targeted safety and compliance. @JohnsHopkins uses our solutions in clinical settings, where doctors can back trace to rooms / departments in ICU units of hospitals (see references in TechCrunch in final thread). 16/23

Inform: This is the product. Simply ‘Proof of Health’, we provide workforce contact tracing, monitoring potential spread of the virus from person-to-person, and give access control to “green zones” within a local workplace facility. 17/23

Port: Health dashboard should tie in to ‘plug-ins’ for declared health status - so e.g. immune workers have different ‘green zone’ access over time. How to share health status? An API in the dashboard to allow companies to write apps using new open sources of data. 18/23

So… in addition to individual-level interventions (mobile apps), we aim to use this platform to help inform containment policies at the workforce level. We are actively discussing ‘how’ with WHO and many others for porting data / apps. 19/23

Huge credit to @balajis for undying focus around these problems and to people like @ScottGottliebMD for his voice today. Initiatives from folks like @trvrb around @nexttrace and https://www.coepi.org/  from MIT are gathering much needed momentum around contact tracing. 20/23

Risk assurance teams are going crazy for enterprise solutions now (using duct tape on the ground!). Laws will require that local municipalities step up safety measures as people resume / go back to work, so we can keep critical areas like food and medicine supplies running. 21/23

No one company or person or nation can do this alone. We need to really come together as people and society, globally, within and outside tech. I’m totally dedicating my future work to preventative health as we all work to solve this problem. Grateful for each day 22/23

Time to get to work! Time is truly of the essence like never before.. Here’s more on how estimote is helping and on our product launch today https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/02/estimote-launches-wearables-for-workplace-level-contact-tracing-for-covid-19/ 23/23