Mobile Applications for Pandemic Monitoring : Approaches, Challenges and Opportunities

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, mobile applications have been widely used and promoted to help prevent the spread of the pandemic. Many countries have proposed these applications with the aim of improving contact tracing and thus helping "flatten the curve" of infection case numbers. However, even though there were many campaigns to promote the use of these apps, their adoption was relatively low, which significantly affected their success. The success of COVID-19 contact tracing apps, in terms of its massive use and effectiveness, seems to have been deeply affected by issues associated with privacy and anonymity and the perception that its potential users have about the cost/benefit. In this paper, we analyze some applications for monitoring and contact tracing of infectious diseases to identify the most common approaches and features. We then proceed to discuss the challenges and risks that may influence the success of this type of applications, and we present some recommendations that can contribute to improve their acceptance. Considering the proposed recommendations, we describe the main features and the development of an app that includes additional functionalities alongside the contact tracing feature, in order to increase user perceived value from the use of the application.