Amid reports of patients with history of international travel jumping quarantine, the department of the Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) of Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) has developed a mobile application which can be used by the officials to track violations by the people placed in isolation as a precautionary measure taken to check the spread of coronavirus.
Developed by a CSE team led by Prof. Bhaskaran Raman and Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu, the Mobile App “can potentially be used by officials for checking quarantine adherence”.
“SAFE has 3 dimensions of verification: location, identity, and time. SAFE is capable of detecting cases where the person may leave the phone and go outside quarantine himself/ herself (this is unlike a few “new” solutions for quarantine checking),” Prof Raman and Prof Chebrolu said.
“Also, SAFE is time-tested: it has been in use since the last 5 years, and has been used for classroom attendance by thousands of students in various courses,” they said.
“The SAFE is ready for deployment. The IITB team will provide support free of cost. The personal data collected (name, email, selfie photos, location) in SAFE are sensitive. The data must be accessed only by explicitly authorized personnel. The data must not be revealed to the public through any means. The data must be used ONLY for the purpose of verifying quarantine adherence,” the two professors said.
