Brilliantly Simple & App-Free Contact Tracing from the Aloha State

“If this gets someone tested and saves a potential death, it is worth it,” explains Aryn Nakaoka regarding his app-free, contact tracing program, Covid Tracking Hawaii. An entrepreneur from the Aloha State, Nakaoka’s motivation comes from his desire to keep all aspects of Hawaii healthy.

The motivation for his solution was a visit to a restaurant where he was asked to provide his phone number. What he and his team put together eliminates the need for the business to keep pieces of paper, manage databases, or make calls.

Read more at https://www.viodi.tv/2020/08/31/a-brilliantly-simple-app-free-contact-tracing-from-the-aloha-state/

To jump to specific spots in the timeline, click on one of the links, below.

00:00:51 – The premise behind Covid Tracking Hawaii is that people don’t want to be tracked, it needs to be simple, and accessible for all people
00:03:06 – Education is the number one priority and people have to act like COVID-19 is serious. They need to be reminded and that’s a big part of what Covid Tracking Hawaii is about.
00:03:35 – Hawaii is in another lockdown and the lockdowns are killing commerce, according to Nakaoka. He sees this as a marketing opportunity for businesses.
00:04:26 – Australia requires sign-ins, but they are hand-written, a mess, and potentially vulnerable to security breaches.
00:05:36 – He sees application with buses, as bus drivers have no idea who got on and off their respective buses and don’t have time to collect names.
00:06:53 – The advantage to the business owner is no maintenance of a database
00:08:27 – He explains that he wants this approach to be successful that it puts itself out of business.
00:08:42 – This could be spread to other service providers around the country. The big cost is the SMS gateway
00:10:00 – The information is portable and doesn’t require a huge database integration
00:10:45 –There is a possibility of monetizing the service to help pay for the costs.
00:11:53 – Although the text messages are relatively inexpensive the costs could become significant if a lot of people use the service.
00:12:24 – This could be the equivalent of a mask for electronic contact tracing.
00:12:50 – Nakaoka talks about working with other partners to extend it geographically across the U.S. and indicates it is scalable. Can anyone guess which Broadband provider Ken is asking about in his question?
00:15:20 – The information they collect is the user’s cell phone number, the date, and location.
00:16:45 – “If someone gets someone tested and saves a potential death, it is worth it.”
00:17:44 – Data is continually purged so that no more than two weeks of data is stored at any time.
00:18:35 – He has an idea of how his data could flow into a health department’s contract tracer Customer Relationship Management system.
00:22:08 – They need a partnership with a telco in order to scale. This is a great marketing opportunity
00:23:02 – He has an idea for an additional app that would solve the problem of QR fatigue
00:23:52 – They don’t keep the information and it costs them to pay for SMSs – he does see an opportunity to add an app – but he doesn’t believe many people will download an app.
00:25:35 – Covid Tracking Hawaii effectively provides a diary for people who have a “dumb phone.