Abstract:
Responses to COVID-19 have largely been led by local, national, and
international public health agencies, who have activated their pandemic plans
and opened the epidemiological toolkit of modelling, testing, isolation and
movement restrictions, surveillance, and contact tracing. In the contemporary
tech-heavy world, many assumed that the common manual process of human
investigators and phone calls could or should be replaced by digital solutions.
But it's not as simple as "add more technology" - the complex way in which
users and societies interact with the technology has significant impacts on
effectiveness. When efforts are not well co-ordinated, fragmentation in system
design and user experience can negatively impact the public health response.
This article briefly covers the journey of how contact tracing registers and
digital diaries evolved in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic, the
initial poor outcomes caused by the lack of central co-ordination, and the
later improvement.