Research group uses smartphone data to see if COVID-19 policies are working

Tech companies can't treat COVID-19 patients or immunize people from the coronavirus, but they have been trying to help public health officials track the spread of the disease. While Apple and Google's contract tracing collaboration requires buy-in from cellphone users, an independent group of researchers created the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network to watch how people are behaving on a larger scale using anonymized data from Facebook and online ad and analytics firms like Camber Systems and Cuebiq. The researchers then use that data to help public health officials form and calibrate their COVID-19 mitigation measures.

The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network won't replace contact tracers, co-founder and data scientist Andrew Schroeder tells Stat News. "The most important aspect of contact tracing is community trust. You don't need an app to solve that problem. What you need is people. You don't have to have highly trained people, you just need a bunch of them, and trust, so people will talk to them." Facebook's Data for Good program, he added, "gives us a close to real-time view of large-scale population change."

"You need both approaches," the individual tracing and the macro movement, Schroeder said, "and you can marry low-tech and high-tech solutions."

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One of the things the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network can discern is how many people in a given ZIP code, county, or city are maintaining social distance, Schroeder explained. "We've seen a pretty clear correlation between accelerated timelines to reopen in specific areas and changes in case count. If you look at Alabama, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio — all places where they changed social distancing orders at earlier stages — you now see a turnaround in the case rate," from falling at the beginning of May to rising now.