The Italian Coronavirus tracking app chosen by the government's technology task force to accompany the so-called 'phase two' of the recovery will most likely be known mid-week. The contingent of 74 experts would seem to be already oriented towards a solution among the 319 proposals arrived and the adoption of bluetooth technology could meet different requirements. The issue of the collection, use and storage of user data remains open.
But above all, once the infected people or those who have come into contact with them are identified, the ability to be able to make carpet pads and, based on the results, gradually resume production activities. And the EU is asking to develop a global app under its coordination to fight the epidemic.
"The contagion tracking app will not be decisive because many infected patients are elderly and do not have a smartphone, while many people do not even know they are positive because they are asymptomatic. In order for the system to work, citizens should be able to know with certainty if you have been infected, "Chiara Sgarbossa, Director of the Digital Innovation in Health Observatory of the Polytechnic of Milan, explains to ANSA, which focuses on the effectiveness of the system linked to the 'digital divide' of our country - as they demonstrate Istat data today - and the ability to do extensive tests of our health system. "Even the experience of the Lombardian app - he underlines - is a very first but not exhaustive and reliable map, not everyone will download it and not everyone will compile it. If the inhabitants of Lombardy are 10 million and download it in 500 thousand, we are at 5% of the population. Everything is left to the civil and social will of the citizen to declare himself ".
Another challenge, therefore, is to convince a sufficient number of people to install the app to make it an effective tool. According to Marcel Salathé, who runs a digital epidemiology laboratory at the Ecole polytechnique federal in Lausanne, 60% of the population should use it.
There is also the joint linked to privacy and compliance with European data protection legislation (Gdpr) given that a tracking system cannot be implemented on the Chinese, non-voluntary surveillance model. The EU data protection supervisor, Wojciech Wiewiorowski, has made it known that he will supervise the proposals adopted to ensure that they are temporary and with a specific purpose. And there is already a European software project to which Italy could engage. It is developed by 130 researchers from eight countries, it is called Pan-European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing (Pepp-Pt), it works with bluetooth and "allows an approach to anonymous and respectful digital privacy tracking that can also be used when travel from one country to another. "
And the element of interoperability between countries will be fundamental in 'phase two' given the different quarantines and reopenings. The European software guarantees, according to some of the organizations involved including the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, also cyber security standards capable of protecting data that could be easily targeted by hackers at the moment. A know-how that could be useful to the Italian task force which currently does not have any cybersecurity expert inside.