New contact-tracing app against the spread of Covid-19 |30 March 2021

A new contact-tracing app named ‘Proximity’, for both locals and foreigners, has been customised by the National Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation (Nisti) in collaboration with Enrst & Young (EY), with the assistance of Dr Ralph Etienne-Cummings, a Seychellois professor working at the John Hopkins University in the United States of America.

The app, database and visualisation dashboard uses BlueTooth technology to measure the proximity and contact time between individuals. It uploads this information anonymously to a secure anonymised database, and provides an interface for health authorities to determine which contacts should be investigated if an individual in the database tests positive for Covid-19.

This process will greatly reduce the manual tracing that health workers will have to undertake, and does not depend on the faulty memories of the individuals, as is the case with manual contract tracing.

The result would be fewer missed contacts, and therefore, reduced potential for spreading Covid-19.

The concept for the phone app started in August as the second phase of the collaboration between EY, Nisti and the department of Public Health. The app took three months to complete through a pilot project undertaken by Nisti in collaboration with a number of local stakeholders, both in government and the private sector.

The chief executive of Nisti, Xavier Estico, said that as the institute responsible for innovation in the country, they took the initiative to find an innovative mechanism to help the Ministry of Health in Covid-19 contact tracing.

After a study by technicians from Nisti and from Public Health on the pattern and on the way contact-tracing was being done, the institute in its first phases of developing the ‘Proximity’ app, got into contact virtually with Ernst & Young Global Limited, commonly known as Ernst & Young or simply EY, one of the world’s largest multinational professional services network with headquarters in London, England, to help with the development of a surveillance system to detect Covid-19 symptoms.

It was only after the putting in place of the surveillance system to detect Covid-19 symptoms, coinciding also with the border control security app, Travisory, that Nisti in collaboration with Professor Etienne-Cummings worked to develop ‘Proximity’, an Ernst & Young software system, as an end to end solution to Covid-19 for the Seychelles.

Following testing of the pilot project in October 2020, ‘Proximity’ was handed over to the Ministry of Health for trials and approval.

Mr Estico said that apart from using the phone data to access usage of the app, Nisti also installed fourteen beacons at certain locations on Mahé, Praslin and La Digue, including on ferry services, for synchronisation of the app.

To maintain privacy of individuals, the location of the contacts are only recorded in terms of which beacon was closest to the contact, or as “out of range” of beacons.

He claimed that the decision to deploy the app nationally is in the hands of the Ministry of Health.

With regard to violation of privacy, Mr Estico said that if somebody with the anonymous code on his or her phone is positive, the contact information gathered from the phone will determine (to be dissimilated by Ministry of Health through the data base) if she or he was an actual contact with others in relation to Covid-19. It is only when a person is positive that, through their given anonymous codes and their confidential registration information held only by health authorities, his or her identity will be known by the Public Health Authority.

Other than that, their identity and positions remain private and securely and anonymously stored in a cloud database.

Patrick Joubert/Nisti