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Background
When the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis first broke
out, it wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to spot Singaporeans out
and about in protective masks. The reason for this was obvious:
the public was aware that SARS could be transmitted via contact
with a SARS carrier.
To keep airborne viruses like SARS from spreading, contact tracing
has always been an important method employed by health authorities
in the control of communicable diseases. Contact tracing was especially
useful in the areas of confirming the diagnosis, determining the
extent of secondary transmission and identifying control measures.
StarTrack, a contact tracing system, was conceptualised by the Institute
for Infocomm Research team (I²R)
in May 2003 shortly after SARS hit Singapore. Its creation stemmed
from the outbreak which resulted in an urgent need to trace the
contact history of an infected person for a prolonged period.
Benefits
StarTrack served as a medical surveillance to facilitate early diagnosis
and treatment of disease among contacts, thereby preventing the
disease from spreading further into the community.
Before StarTrack arrived on the scene, most of the contact tracing
methods in practice were manual and very time consuming. During
the SARS period, there were a couple of such electronic automated
schemes employed. However, due to its inherent limitations such
as increased cost, complexity, difficulty in installation, reduced
battery life etc, their feasibility soon declined. These limitations
prevented them from being widely deployed, in spite of the fact
that contact tracing was fast becoming a very critical component
in containing the SARS outbreak.
With these limitations in mind, StarTrack contact tracing system
was designed and developed so as to provide a viable alternative
to the current systems. The team eventually came up with mobile
tags that could operate on coin-sized batteries consuming very low
power. Within a timeframe of just 4 months, StarTrack proved to
be an effective solution. It consists of three functional modules
– a reader, beacons and mobile tags. Tags are worn by personnel
and information can be exchanged among them, and they are carefully
designed with low power circuitry and protocols to provide long
battery life. Beacons provide location information to the tags.
The reader is used to activate (issue) and deactivate (return) tags,
and to download information from the tags. For added convenience,
all the processes such as tag activation/deactivation, tracking
and information downloading are done wirelessly (figure 1). Furthermore,
these features make the system very easy to install and operate.
When a tag is attached to the person that needs to be traced, their
contact information such as identity and time of contact will be
exchanged and recorded in their respective tag. This can be done
anywhere and anytime, with no additional infrastructure required.
Additional Applications
StarTrack is a system that can also be applied to other areas where
short range proximity-based contact tracing is needed. For example,
it can be applied to a supermarket environment to study consumer
browsing pattern in the supermarket. Another possible scenario can
also be to study the interaction behavior of animals in the wild.
Figure 1: An illustration of how the system works
Figure 2 : Prototype of the StarTrack Contact Tracing System
For enquiries/explore collaboration, please contact:
Industry Development Department
Tel: 65 6874 8399
Fax: 65 6775 9923
Email: inddev@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
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