To address concerns about battery life and the use of Bluetooth in its contact tracing app, Singapore currently is looking to develop wearable devices to help drive the adoption of such technologies and boost its efforts to contain COVID-19. It also has no plans, for now at least, to make the use of its contact tracing app mandatory.
Introduced in March, the TraceTogether app taps Bluetooth[1] signals to detect other participating mobile devices in close proximity to allow them to identify those who have been in close contact when needed. The app identifies participating TraceTogether users who are within 2 metres of each other for more than 30 minutes. The data then is captured, encrypted, and stored locally on the user's phone for 21 days, which spans the incubation period of the virus.
To date, some 1.5 million have downloaded the contact tracing app, or roughly 20% to 25% of Singapore's population of 5.5 million, said Singapore's Foreign Minister and Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Programme Office, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Sky News Australia[2].
"It is still a voluntary exercise and I would try to keep it for as long as possible on that basis," Balakrishnan said. "Contact tracing is an essential part of epidemic management, but contact tracing remains, at the heart of it, a human endeavour. In dealing with human beings, when a diagnosis is made, I do not believe a smart app should tell you the diagnosis... the human being remains at the centre of this entire process."
He noted that both countries used Bluetooth-enabled proximity data, which had led to feedback about the use of Bluetooth and the contact tracing app depleting the battery life of the smartphone.
"So, the other thing we are working on now to