REACT is a multi-institution
project among Emory University, University of Southern California, and University of Texas Health, that aims
to develop techniques and a mobile application, REACT, for REAal-time Contact Tracing and risk monitoring
via privacy-enhanced tracking of users' locations and symptoms. Contact tracing is critical for controlling
epidemic disease outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Real-time location traces of individuals can be
used to significantly speed up and scale up contact tracing and enable fine-grained individual risk
monitoring that goes beyond bluetooth based proximity tracing. However, such use also heightens concerns on
individual privacy and data abuse. Urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a careful balance of privacy
protection with public health benefits. With privacy enhancement that allows users to control and refine the
frequency and granularity with which their information will be collected and used, REACT will enable: 1)
contact tracing of individuals and locations that a confirmed case has contact with for quarantine
and decontamination to control further spread, 2) individual risk monitoring based on the locations they
visit and their contact with others so they can be informed and alerted; and 3) community risk
monitoring and detection of early signals of community spread to prepare for larger-scale infections.
