ArticleSustainable cities and society2021
Digital contact tracing, community uptake, and proximity awareness technology to fight COVID-19: a systematic review.
Article in Sustainable cities and society, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The role of digital tools and emerging devices in COVID-19 contact tracing during the first 18 months of the pandemic: a systematic review.European journal of public health · 2024Pooled it
- COVID-19 Contact Tracing Strategies During the First Wave of the Pandemic: Systematic Review of Published Studies.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Pooled it
- Global Experiences of Community Responses to COVID-19: A Systematic Literature Review.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Public health effectiveness of digital contact tracing in the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review of available data.Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2021Pooled it
- Characteristics and determinants of population acceptance of COVID-19 digital contact tracing: a systematic review.Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2021Pooled it
- Effect on Response Rates of Adding a QR Code to Patient Consent Forms for Qualitative Research in Patients With Cancer: Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR formative research · 2025Trial
- Impact of Digital Contact Tracing and Other Nonpharmaceutical Interventions on Pandemic Control: Microlevel, Behavior-Driven Agent-Based Model Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Sustainable Personalized Home Care for Pandemic Management: A Service-Oriented Approach.Digital government (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- The Role of Transparency in Digital Contact Tracing During COVID-19: Insights from an Expert Survey.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2024Article
- An AI-empowered indoor digital contact tracing system for COVID-19 outbreaks in residential care homes.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2024Article
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce COVID-19 transmission in the UK: a rapid mapping review and interactive evidence gap map.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2024Review
- The effects of public health and social measures (PHSM) implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic: An overview of systematic reviews.Cochrane evidence synthesis and methods · 2024Review
- Accurate Estimation of Individual Transmission Rates Through Contact Analytics Using UWB Based Indoor Location Data.International Conference on Smart Applications, Communications and Networking : SmartNets. International Conference on Smart Applications, Communications and Networking · 2024Article
- The Israeli health system's rapid responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.Israel journal of health policy research · 2024Article
- An Examination of Responses to COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Efforts in Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx Communities of Los Angeles.Health equity · 2024Article
- Interplay of Digital Proximity App Use and SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Uptake in Switzerland: Analysis of Two Population-Based Cohort Studies.International journal of public health · 2023Article
- Using a Proximity-Detection Technology to Nudge for Physical Distancing in a Swedish Workplace During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Retrospective Case Study.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Dutch public health professionals' perspectives and needs regarding citizen involvement in COVID-19 contact tracing through digital support tools: an exploratory qualitative study.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- The German COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing App: A Socioeconomic Evaluation.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Understanding Trust and Changes in Use After a Year With the NHS COVID-19 Contact Tracing App in the United Kingdom: Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Digital contact tracing provides an expeditious and comprehensive way to collect and analyze data on people's proximity, location, movement, and health status. However, this technique raises concerns about data privacy and its overall effectiveness. This paper contributes to this debate as it provides a systematic review of digital contact tracing studies between January 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021. Following the PRISMA protocol for systematic reviews and the CHEERS statement for quality assessment, 580 papers were initially screened, and 19 papers were included in a qualitative synthesis. We add to the current literature in three ways. First, we evaluate whether digital contact tracing can mitigate COVID-19 by either reducing the effective reproductive number or the infected cases. Second, we study whether digital is more effective than manual contact tracing. Third, we analyze how proximity/location awareness technologies affect data privacy and population participation. We also discuss proximity/location accuracy problems arising when these technologies are applied in different built environments (i.e., home, transport, mall, park). This review provides a strong rationale for using digital contact tracing under specific requirements. Outcomes may inform current digital contact tracing implementation efforts worldwide regarding the potential benefits, technical limitations, and trade-offs between effectiveness and privacy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.