What Most Wearables Get Wrong About Contact Tracing
With the increased spread and severity of COVID-19, effective contact tracing has become mission-critical in our fight against the disease. Historically this has been done manually by volunteers who interview patients and then reach out to people and places they may have exposed to the disease, but this method has proven to be cumbersome and inefficient.
People then turned to technology, with wearables proving to be a promising solution. But just like apps, many of the wearable solutions available today are riddled with faults. Let’s dive in.
They Don’t Go Beyond Surface Level Reporting
Solving for contact tracing isn’t a simple one-to-one equation, who and where a single person has seen and been. It’s a cascading web with complicated layers, and to be truly effective people need solutions that show them how one interaction can influence countless others. For example, Joe tests positive after he spent a day at work where he had a conversation with Susan. But who did Susan then interact with after that encounter, and then what interactions did those people have? Unfortunately, most wearables stop at a first-degree level of tracking, limiting the visibility of actual disease spread. While this can help dampen some of COVID-19’s reach, it’s the additional 2nd and 3rd degree layers of interaction and reporting business leaders need to fully understand the potential infectious landscape among their employees.
With ResCUE, our proven smart badge + analytics platform creates a comprehensive map of all foot traffic across a designated audience. Users simply slip on the badge and the back-end software coalesces and breaks out who came into contact with who, when and for how long. This creates the big picture leaders need to make smart decisions about their operations to keep employees and customers safe.
They Incite Privacy Concerns
What has turned many consumers off to using app-based solutions are their concerns around privacy. People want to maintain a sense of security, be it their whereabouts, personal information and more. Unfortunately, most wearable solutions use GPS or WiFi to function, putting people’s identity and data at risk. This is also especially true of badge solutions that have employee information inherently built-in, such as key cards used to grant employees access within office spaces. ResCUE simply registers badge-to-badge, meaning it offers a PII-free option for contact tracing that collects interaction data completely anonymously.
They Won’t Work Everywhere
Digging into the above point further, given many wearable solutions rely on WiFi networks or RFID signals to work, they are limited to where and how well they can operate. Particularly for industries that operate in complex and remote locations, such as construction sites, manufacturing plants or industrial environments like oil rigs, signals may not be strong enough or available to perform as needed. And given the swaths of people at such locations and the amount of foot traffic they undergo, inaccurate readings are a dangerous possibility.
They’re Complicated
Finally, many of the wearable solutions available today require complex set-ups. Whether it’s mandatory user downloads, configuring back-end tracking repositories and more, these solutions are highly susceptible to human error and frustrating lag times. With ResCUE, people simply turn the badge on and place it on their person, and it gets right to work. Our back-end platform is automated so managers can log in to their personalized dashboards to see interactions in real-time.
Here at Proxfinity, we’ve always prided ourselves on being experts at the human-to-human experience, and elevating it in the most effective, yet least intrusive, way. With ResCUE we wanted to put control back into business’ hands when it comes to the health and safety of their staff and customers. In these dire times, people can’t afford to rely on solutions that simply can’t get the job done—so put ResCUE to work.
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