Contact Tracing in Healthcare Settings During the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Bluetooth Low Energy and Artificial Intelligence-A Viewpoint

Guanglin Tang; Kenneth Westover; Steve Jiang

doi:10.3389/frai.2021.666599

Contact Tracing in Healthcare Settings During the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Bluetooth Low Energy and Artificial Intelligence-A Viewpoint

Front Artif Intell. 2021 Apr 23:4:666599. doi: 10.3389/frai.2021.666599. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Guanglin Tang¹, Kenneth Westover¹, Steve Jiang¹

Affiliation

¹ Medical Artificial Intelligence and Automation (MAIA) Laboratory, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted great damage with effects that will likely linger for a long time. This crisis has highlighted the importance of contact tracing in healthcare settings because hospitalized patients are among the high risk for complications and death. Moreover, effective contact tracing schemes are not yet available in healthcare settings. A good contact tracing technology in healthcare settings should be equipped with six features: promptness, simplicity, high precision, integration, minimized privacy concerns, and social fairness. One potential solution that addresses all of these elements leverages an indoor real-time location system based on Bluetooth Low Energy and artificial intelligence.

Keywords: COVID-19; artificial intelligence; bluetooth; contact tracing; deep learning; healthcare; real-time location system.