On Wednesday, June 3rd, a team led by the COVID Tech Task Force is putting on the first of several free public conferences on the topic of Contact Tracing and Technology. Harvardâs Berkman Klein Center, NYUâs Alliance for Public Interest Technology, TechCrunch, Betaworks Studios, and Hangar are also part of organizing the effort.
Iâve gone extremely deep down the contact tracing and exposure notification rabbit hole. In February, I had never heard the phrase contact tracing. Today, I not only understand it well, I have a lot of perspective on the current state of contact tracing technology, along with emerging ânew tech solutionsâ to contact tracing, and the incredible challenge of operationalizing these new technologies.
More importantly (and thankfully), several tech leaders motivated by Harper Reed recognized that the tech community that began talking about âcontact tracingâ in April was creating massive confusion given the long history of contact tracing. The tech folks (me included) tried to separate it from classical contact tracing by calling it âdigital contact tracing.â But, this wasnât really contact tracing at all and needed a different name. Harper labeled it Exposure Alerting which has finally found its true name as âExposure Notification.â
Contact Tracing and Exposure Notification are different but related. And the way contact tracing is currently implemented is on a spectrum from legacy software systems to paper/whiteboard tracking. Not surprisingly, a number of tech companies and consulting firms have âcontact tracing productsâ coming out. Some are excellent. Many either inadequate, not contact tracing, or mostly vaporware.
Two weeks ago, on the bi-monthly call that Fred Wilson and I do with several of the leaders of the Covid-19 Task Force, we suggested that they do a series of public events â as inclusive as they could â to help convene anyone who is interested around the issues of contact tracing, exposure alerting, health care, public policy, and technology. Fred wrote about this yesterday. We are both delighted that this has come together so quickly as the public forum on this is badly needed.
This event has several key speakers along with a bunch of demos of emerging products. Itâll be three hours long and live streamed on the web.
RSVP to attend. And, if you are working on a contact tracing or exposure notification application and want to be part of the demo mix, send me an email and Iâll get you connected.