Trap Corona

Authors

Avinash Chandrashekar

Inspiration

A store I visited was maintaining a register, and normally - I am someone who is hesitant to give out my contact information for privacy concerns gave the information since I thought it would be effective for contact tracing. However - it was only of limited utility since only a few vendors were using it, and they couldn't communicate their results with each other. This meant that if someone who visited a shop tested positive, only a few shops would actually notify their other customers that they may be at risk, and also, if the same customer visited multiple shops, there would be no record of this.

What it does

A ledger is maintained at the level of the vendor/service provider and all visits are logged in a graph database using the customers' national unique ID (here it is Aadhar) as their unique identifier. When someone in the graph tests positive or exhibits symptoms - people can be notified appropriately through SMS and push notifications.

Crucially - this does not require smartphones for operation, and can entirely be done through SMS alone, making it a low tech solution.

How I built it

We have partially built it using neo4j, PHP and Java

Challenges I ran into

1) Coordinating with a team I hadn't worked together before, when we can't meet 2) Unfamiliarity with neo4j (primary issue) 3) Policy about how to handle knowledge of infection

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

1) We were able to create a proof of concept, and a video demonstrating it

What I learned

Familiarise yourself with technologies before a hackathon Have a clear vision

What's next for Trap Corona

We hope to build a more robust, scalable app, with multiple languages supported and more comprehensive privacy and civil liberty policies. We then hope to approach the local governmennt to deploy this at scale.