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Information Technology-Based Tracing Strategy in Response to COVID-19 in South Korea-Privacy Controversies.

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has heightened discussion of the use of mobile phone data in outbreak response. Mobile phone data have been proposed to monitor effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions, to assess potential drivers of spatiotemporal spread, and to support contact tracing efforts. While these data may be an important part of COVID-19 response, their use must be considered alongside a careful understanding of the behaviors and populations they capture. Here, we review the different applications for mobile phone data in guiding and evaluating COVID-19 response, the relevance of these applications for infectious disease transmission and control, and potential sources and implications of selection bias in mobile phone data. We also discuss best practices and potential pitfalls for directly integrating the collection, analysis, and interpretation of these data into public health decision making. In this Perspective, the authors review the different applications for mobile phone data to support COVID-19 pandemic response, the relevance of these applications for infectious disease transmission and control, and potential sources and implications of selection bias in mobile phone data.

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The use of mobile phone data to inform analysis of COVID-19 pandemic epidemiology

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is favoring digital transitions in many industries and in society as a whole. Health care organizations have responded to the first phase of the pandemic by rapidly adopting digital solutions and advanced technology tools.
Objective: The aim of this review is to describe the digital solutions that have been reported in the early scientific literature to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on individuals and health systems.
Methods: We conducted a systematic review of early COVID-19–related literature (from January 1 to April 30, 2020) by searching MEDLINE and medRxiv with appropriate terms to find relevant literature on the use of digital technologies in response to the pandemic. We extracted study characteristics such as the paper title, journal, and publication date, and we categorized the retrieved papers by the type of technology and patient needs addressed. We built a scoring rubric by cross-classifying the patient needs with the type of technology. We also extracted information and classified each technology reported by the selected articles according to health care system target, grade of innovation, and scalability to other geographical areas.
Results: The search identified 269 articles, of which 124 full-text articles were assessed and included in the review after screening. Most of the selected articles addressed the use of digital technologies for diagnosis, surveillance, and prevention. We report that most of these digital solutions and innovative technologies have been proposed for the diagnosis of COVID-19. In particular, within the reviewed articles, we identified numerous suggestions on the use of artificial intelligence (AI)–powered tools for the diagnosis and screening of COVID-19. Digital technologies are also useful for prevention and surveillance measures, such as contact-tracing apps and monitoring of internet searches and social media usage. Fewer scientific contributions address the use of digital technologies for lifestyle empowerment or patient engagement.
Conclusions: In the field of diagnosis, digital solutions that integrate with traditional methods, such as AI-based diagnostic algorithms based both on imaging and clinical data, appear to be promising. For surveillance, digital apps have already proven their effectiveness; however, problems related to privacy and usability remain. For other patient needs, several solutions have been proposed, such as telemedicine or telehealth tools. These tools have long been available, but this historical moment may actually be favoring their definitive large-scale adoption. It is worth taking advantage of the impetus provided by the crisis; it is also important to keep track of the digital solutions currently being proposed to implement best practices and models of care in future and to adopt at least some of the solutions proposed in the scientific literature, especially in national health systems, which have proved to be particularly resistant to the digital transition in recent years.

Adoption of Digital Technologies in Health Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Systematic Review of Early Scientific Literature.

The current COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns worldwide, leading to serious health, economic, and social challenges. The rapid spread of the virus at a global scale highlights the need for a more harmonized, less privacy-concerning, easily accessible approach to monitoring the human mobility that has proven to be associated with viral transmission. In this study, we analyzed over 580 million tweets worldwide to see how global collaborative efforts in reducing human mobility are reflected from the user-generated information at the global, country, and U.S. state scale. Considering the multifaceted nature of mobility, we propose two types of distance: the single-day distance and the cross-day distance. To quantify the responsiveness in certain geographic regions, we further propose a mobility-based responsive index (MRI) that captures the overall degree of mobility changes within a time window. The results suggest that mobility patterns obtained from Twitter data are amenable to quantitatively reflect the mobility dynamics. Globally, the proposed two distances had greatly deviated from their baselines after March 11, 2020, when WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. The considerably less periodicity after the declaration suggests that the protection measures have obviously affected people's travel routines. The country scale comparisons reveal the discrepancies in responsiveness, evidenced by the contrasting mobility patterns in different epidemic phases. We find that the triggers of mobility changes correspond well with the national announcements of mitigation measures, proving that Twitter-based mobility implies the effectiveness of those measures. In the U.S., the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on mobility is distinct. However, the impacts vary substantially among states.

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Twitter reveals human mobility dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Summary Approaches to preventing or mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have varied markedly between nations. We examined the approach up to August 2020 taken by two jurisdictions which had successfully eliminated COVID-19 by this time: Taiwan and New Zealand. Taiwan reported a lower COVID-19 incidence rate (20.7 cases per million) compared with NZ (278.0 per million). Extensive public health infrastructure established in Taiwan pre-COVID-19 enabled a fast coordinated response, particularly in the domains of early screening, effective methods for isolation/quarantine, digital technologies for identifying potential cases and mass mask use. This timely and vigorous response allowed Taiwan to avoid the national lockdown used by New Zealand. Many of Taiwan's pandemic control components could potentially be adopted by other jurisdictions.

Potential lessons from the Taiwan and New Zealand health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Ko, Haksoo; Leitner, John M.; Kim, Eunsoo; Jung, Jong-Gu.January, 2017.Structure and enforcement of data privacy law in South Korea,Reports,[Seoul, South Korea]Seoul National University,37

Structure and enforcement of data privacy law in South Korea

In response to COVID-19, Korea has implemented digital contact tracing and patient route disclosure schemes. While the former has been embraced more willingly, the latter has been shunned due to privacy concerns, demonstrating that privacy is highly dynamic and is of contextual value.

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Privacy in the Time of COVID-19: Divergent Paths for Contact Tracing and Route-Disclosure Mechanisms in South Korea

Korea recently enacted the Unified Bankruptcy Act. It aims to streamline existing bankruptcy procedure by consolidating various statutes governing bankruptcy into a single statute. Prior to the current enactment, when a company was in distress, it could restructure itself and continue its operation through corporate reorganization or through composition and, during the reorganization procedure, the incumbent manager was often discharged. Under the new statute, a single type of rehabilitation proceeding is available for a distressed company and the incumbent manager is generally retained as the receiver. This article reviews the current bankruptcy regime in Korea and argues that this change has a risk of being used as an entrenchment device for incumbent managers. In a country where control transfer rarely takes place the transfer of corporate control would become even more difficult. Further, this article argues that in order to ameliorate this risk, it would be desirable to require a sales process once a distressed company is in corporate bankruptcy proceedings. (A revised version was published as 24 UCLA Pac. Basin L.J. 201 (2007).)

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Korea’S Newly Enacted Unified Bankruptcy Act: The Role of the New Act in Facilitating (or Discouraging) the Transfer of Corporate Control

Objectives We analyzed Korea's data privacy regime in the context of protecting and utilizing health and medical big data and tried to draw policy implications from the analyses. Methods We conducted comparative analyses of the legal and regulatory environments governing health and medical big data with a view to drawing policy implications for Korea. The legal and regulatory regimes considered include the following: the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Japan. We reviewed relevant statutory materials as well as various non-statutory materials and guidelines issued by public authorities. Where available, we also examined policy measures implemented by government agencies. Results In this study, we investigated how various jurisdictions deal with legal and regulatory issues that may arise from the use of health and medical information with regard to the protection of data subjects' rights and the protection of personal information. We compared and analyzed various forms of legislation in various jurisdictions and also considered technical methods, such as de-identification. The main findings include the following: there is a need to streamline the relationship between the general data privacy regime and the regulatory regime governing health and medical big data; the regulatory and institutional structure for data governance should be more clearly delineated; and regulation should encourage the development of suitable methodologies for the de-identification of data and, in doing so, a principle-based and risk-based approach should be taken. Conclusions Following our comparative legal analyses, implications were drawn. The main conclusion is that the relationship between the legal requirements imposed for purposes of personal information protection and the regulatory requirements governing the use of health and medical data is complicated and multi-faceted and, as such, their relationship should be more clearly streamlined and delineated.

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Haksoo Ko

Papers

Information Technology-Based Tracing Strategy in Response to COVID-19 in South Korea-Privacy Controversies.

Structure and enforcement of data privacy law in South Korea

Privacy in the Time of COVID-19: Divergent Paths for Contact Tracing and Route-Disclosure Mechanisms in South Korea

Korea’S Newly Enacted Unified Bankruptcy Act: The Role of the New Act in Facilitating (or Discouraging) the Transfer of Corporate Control

Protecting and Utilizing Health and Medical Big Data: Policy Perspectives from Korea