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Rapporti ISS COVID-19 in English

Indietro Rapporto ISS COVID-19 n. 59/2020 English version - Digital support for contact tracing during the pandemic: ethical and governance considerations. Version of September 17, 2020

Istituto Superiore di Sanità
Digital support for contact tracing during the pandemic: ethical and governance considerations. Version of September 17, 2020.
ISS Bioethics COVID-19 Working Group
2020, iii, 23 p. Rapporto ISS COVID-19 n. 59/2020 – English version

Contact Tracing (CT) is a fundamental public health tool for the prevention and control of the spread of communicable diseases from person to person. Digital CT makes use of telematic and digital contacts, limiting personal contacts between public health professionals and citizens and using telematic database access and proximity tracking technologies via Bluetooth or GPS. Mobile applications (“Apps”) downloaded on smartphones can be a powerful technological support for the CT. CT through Apps raises multiple relevant ethical issues involving various areas: organization of health services, public health, clinical medicine, social medicine, epidemiology, technology, law and many other areas. Among the issues raised are: proportionality of the information collected, voluntariness of use, consent, information, management rules, transparency of the code and the results of its dissemination, data deletion criteria, free availability of technical and health care assistance, anonymity, and many others. The report provides the information necessary to deal with ethical issues: epidemiological, public health, technological, engineering and legal elements are included. The Working Group highlights some crucial elements from an ethical point of view, which concern in particular the evaluation of effectiveness, the separation of personal data from public health data, transparency, information, and the solidarity dimension that must characterize any public health action.


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Rapporti ISS COVID-19 in English