Information system for epidemic control: a computational solution addressing successful experiences and main challenges

PurposeThe SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused a major impact on worldwide public health and economics. The lessons learned from the successful attempts to contain the pandemic escalation revealed that the wise usage of contact tracing and information systems can widely help the containment work of any contagious disease. In this context, this paper investigates other researches on this domain, as well as the main issues related to the practical implementation of such systems and specifies a technical solution.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed solution is based on the automatic identification of relevant contacts between infected or suspected people with susceptible people; inference of contamination risk based on symptoms history, user navigation records and contact information; real-time georeferenced information of population density of infected or suspect people; and automatic individual social distancing recommendation calculated through the individual contamination risk and the worsening of clinical condition risk.FindingsThe solution was specified, prototyped and evaluated by potential users and health authorities. The proposed solution has the potential of becoming a reference on how to coordinate the efforts of health authorities and the population on epidemic control.Originality/valueThis paper proposed an original information system for epidemic control which was applied for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and could be easily extended to other epidemics.