Digital contact tracing and exposure notification: ethical guidance for trustworthy pandemic management
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Digital contact tracing and exposure notification: ethical guidance for trustworthy pandemic management Robert Ranisch1 · Niels Nijsingh2 · Angela Ballantyne3 · Anne van Bergen2 · Alena Buyx4 · Orsolya Friedrich5 · Tereza Hendl2 · Georg Marckmann2 · Christian Munthe6 · Verina Wild2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract There is growing interest in contact tracing apps (CT apps) for pandemic management. It is crucial to consider ethical requirements before, while, and after implementing such apps. In this paper, we illustrate the complexity and multiplicity of the ethical considerations by presenting an ethical framework for a responsible design and implementation of CT apps. Using this framework as a starting point, we briefly highlight the interconnection of social and political contexts, available measures of pandemic management, and a multi-layer assessment of CT apps. We will discuss some trade-offs that arise from this perspective. We then suggest that public trust is of major importance for population uptake of contact tracing apps. Hasty, ill-prepared or badly communicated implementations of CT apps will likely undermine public trust, and as such, risk impeding general effectiveness. Keywords Contact tracing apps · Covid-19 · Public trust · Public health · Health apps · mHealth
Introduction: the rise of digital contact tracing Digital technologies are increasingly being discussed and implemented for Covid-19 pandemic management and as tools for easing restrictive measures, such as lockdowns
(Mello and Wang 2020; Ting et al. 2020). Due to the high penetration rate of smartphones, there has been a huge interest in mobile phone data as a source for public health research and measures (Oliver et al. 2020). To track the spread of the virus, in Europe and elsewhere, network operators share (anonymized and aggregated) phone location
* Robert Ranisch robert.ranisch@uni‑tuebingen.de
Verina Wild [email protected]
Niels Nijsingh [email protected]‑muenchen.de
1
Angela Ballantyne [email protected]
International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
2
Anne van Bergen [email protected]
Institute of Ethics, History and Theory of Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany
3
Alena Buyx adina‑[email protected]
Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
4
Orsolya Friedrich orsolya.friedrich@fernuni‑hagen.de
Institute for History and Ethics in Medicine, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
5
Tereza Hendl [email protected]
Institute of Philosophy, FernUniversität Hagen, Hagen, Germany
6
Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Georg Marckmann [email protected] Christian Munthe [email protected]
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data. Apple and Google, two leading providers of smartphone operating systems, release data to show mobility trends in countries and selected
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