Title: Using blockchain for trustworthy mobile contact tracing

Authors: Richard K. Lomotey; Emmanuel Kaku; Ralph Deters

Addresses: Department of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University, Beaver, Monaca PA, USA ' Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada ' Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

Abstract: As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb globally, lots of public healthcare safety measures are being proposed. Apart from safety measures such as social distancing, mask wearing and personal hygiene, technological interventions have also been put forward to mitigate the escalating incidents. One of these technological solutions is the deployment of mobile contact tracing applications, which are software deployed on smartphones and sensors with the capability to detect proximate devices. In this paper, we proposed a mobile contact tracing architecture that is blockchain driven with the main aim of ensuring user's privacy. The proposed system uses uniquely generated IDs and Bluetooth low energy to identify proximate devices that are in close contact. The adoption of blockchain facilitates consensus between the proximate devices so that the system can efficiently keep track of all close contacts. Preliminary test results of the system show high accuracy for the determination of close contacts.

Keywords: blockchain; mobile; trust; contact tracing; COVID-19; provenance; privacy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTDS.2021.118780

International Journal of Spatio-Temporal Data Science, 2021 Vol.1 No.3, pp.246 - 269

Received: 10 Jan 2021
Accepted: 23 Jan 2021
Published online: 06 Nov 2021 *

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