Contagious Patient Tracking Application Spotlight: Privacy and Security Rights

Abstract

As the Covid-19 outbreak spreads across the globe and has killed many lives, many applications have been created to track patients and fight this pandemic. However, several applications lack safety and privacy. This paper designs and develops a mobile app to track patients with the Covid-19 or any other pandemic disease through using GPS in Iraq. Moreover, the app maintains a privacy for users by encrypting their personal data before sending them to the cloud using a MODE CBC AES block encryption algorithm. The app keeps the identity and location of the users, supports two language interfaces English and Arabic, and works in Android and iOS environments. Only the health care providers can decrypt these data and know about the patient's location. Also, to make the patient trusts the application, his/her information will be deleted after sending his/her negative test after 21 days. In addition, the app provides users with information regarding healthcare places in the case of emergency. For the evaluation of this app, a data was collected from 20 users, including males and females and their ages were between (20–50) in Mosul city. The results showed that the app works properly and the users are notified when they are in close with other registered infected people. In addition, the users found that the app was simple, easy to use, and useful to do contact safely. To convince the users to utilize this app, the app is provided with button trial option to try it.