Aarogya Setu & Other Apps: How Bluetooth And Data Analytics Lead Contact Tracing For COVID-19

The majority of contact tracing applications are based on Bluetooth which is used to aggregate anonymized data sets for analytics. Governments and health specialists across the world are collectively striving to find solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. One technology trend that is gaining mass adoption at an incredibly fast pace is contact tracing systems. In this article, we will look at how different organizations are working towards developing contact tracing solutions.  In theory, it is simple to build a smartphone-based automated contact tracing system: each phone would continually send its current location to a central server. But due to privacy concerns, this cannot be done, and data must be collected in an anonymized fashion. Phones cannot continuously broadcast its phone number or any static identifier as it is a gross violation of privacy. Here is where more complex tools come in.  India's Aarogya Setu To illustrate how Bluetooth and analytics are pla