Background Using different technologies for healthcare-related purposes has been significantly accelerated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This outbreak highlighted the need for digital contact-tracing applications to effectively manage the pandemic by identifying positive case close contacts that might be the virus carriers. Objective The objective of this review is to examine design decisions related to COVID-19 contact-tracing applications and the implications of these decisions. This review can be a useful aid in navigating the existing approaches in COVID-19 digital contact tracing and their different aspects including the potential supported functions, privacy and security. Method A narrative review was conducted using Google Scholar database from August to October 2020, limited to English language articles and reports published after 2010. Main outcome Different technologies have been used for digital contact tracing. The choice of these technologies and their software architectures could influence different factors such as data collection accuracy and effectiveness of an application in identifying possible virus spread. Furthermore, different technologies require different levels of user interaction and have different security and privacy concerns which could potentially impact application adoption. Conclusion Digital contact tracing has been introduced as one of the easy and efficient methods to trace people in close contact with infected COVID-19 cases. This tracing could be an effective strategy to break the chain of infection transmission among people. However, based on the used technology and the software architecture, different contact-tracing applications offer different possible trade-offs that should be taken into account based on government’s objectives on contact tracing. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the article or available through traditional means (PubMed, Google Scholar).

中文翻译：

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联系人跟踪应用程序：技术回顾

背景技术自从COVID-19大流行开始以来，就大大加快了将各种技术用于医疗保健相关目的的步伐。此次爆发突出表明，需要使用数字式接触者跟踪应用程序，以通过识别可能是病毒携带者的积极病例密切接触者来有效管理大流行病。目的本次审查的目的是检查与COVID-19联系人跟踪应用程序有关的设计决策以及这些决策的含义。这项审查可以帮助您导航COVID-19数字联系人跟踪中的现有方法及其不同方面，包括潜在的受支持功能，隐私和安全性。方法采用2020年8月至2020年10月使用Google学术搜索数据库进行叙述性评论，仅限于2010年之后发布的英语文章和报告。主要结果数字接触追踪已使用了不同的技术。这些技术及其软件体系结构的选择可能会影响不同的因素，例如数据收集的准确性以及应用程序在识别可能的病毒传播方面的有效性。此外，不同的技术需要不同级别的用户交互，并且具有不同的安全性和隐私问题，这可能会影响应用程序的采用。结论数字接触跟踪已被引入为跟踪与感染COVID-19病例密切接触的人的一种简便而有效的方法。这种跟踪可能是打破人与人之间感染传播链的有效策略。然而，根据所使用的技术和软件体系结构，不同的联系人跟踪应用程序会提供不同的可能的权衡，这些折衷应根据政府的联系人跟踪目标加以考虑。该研究过程中生成或分析的所有数据均包含在文章中，或通过传统方式（PubMed，Google Scholar）获得。