Update 6/2/20: We’ve decided to postpone tomorrow’s COVID-19 CT/EN forum to June 17th. In light of the very important conversations that need to happen around justice, police brutality and race in the United States, we want to make sure we are not taking space and oxygen.
Stay tuned for more details about how and when we will continue with the event and its educational mission around contact tracing and exposure notification.
Exposure notification and contact tracing are two related but distinct measures many public health authorities are either considering or already implementing.
Contact tracing is a practice almost as old as epidemiology itself, but today’s technology means the way that we go about tracking the spread of a contagious illness within and between communities is changing very quickly. This presents an opportunity for learning more about the opportunities and challenges presented in extending contact tracing and exposure notification via digital means.
To that end, we’re happy to be working with the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, as well as Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, NYU’s Alliance for Public Interest Technology, Betaworks Studios and Hangar. We’ll be playing host on TC to their live-streamed discussion around contact-tracing and exposure-notification applications, including demonstrations of some of the cutting-edge products that will be available in the U.S. to tackle these challenging, but crucial, tasks. The day’s events will include a roundtable discussion followed by a series of product demos, and will take place starting at 11 AM EDT (8 AM PDT) on Wednesday, June 3.
Below, we’ve included an agenda of the confirmed speakers and demonstrations for the day so far. Note that this is a work in progress, and that more speakers and demos will be added to the day’s slate as we get closer to Wednesday. To RSVP for this free event, check out this link.
11am-1pm EDT: Roundtable Discussion – Hear from researchers, healthcare professionals, and technologists, including:
- Andrew McLaughlin is helping lead the Task Force’s contact-tracing/exposure-notification initiative. Andrew is the chairman of Access Now, the former Deputy U.S. CTO for the White House and the former director of Global Public Policy at Google.
- Daniel Burka is supporting New York State’s COVID-19 response efforts through Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies, a global health initiative led by former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden..
- Harper Reed is helping lead the Task Force’s contact-tracing/exposure-notification initiative. Harper is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and was the CTO of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
- Jonathan Jackson is the founder and CEO at Dimagi, a social enterprise that develops innovative technology solutions for front-line workforces and underserved populations. They have an extensive background in global health and are a leader in mobile health data collection.
- Jonathan Zittrain is a professor of law and computer science, and co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Jonathan’s work focuses on topics including control of digital property, privacy frameworks and the roles of intermediaries in internet architecture.
- Randall Thomas is assisting Resolve to Save Lives and other stakeholders with the New York State response to COVID-19. Randall is the CTO of Geometer, a technology incubator.
- Mona Sloane is an NYU-based sociologist working on inequality in the context of AI design and policy. At NYU, she helps form NYU’s Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and is co-principal investigator on the COVID-19 Tech Project. Mona also leads the project Terra Incognita: Mapping NYC’s New Digital Public Spaces in the COVID-19 Outbreak.
- Margaret Bourdeaux, MD, MPH is the policy liaison for Partners in Health COVID-19 Contact Tracing Program, and holds appointments at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
- Mary L. Gray is a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research and an Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow at Harvard University.
- Mike Flowers is leading implementation for contact tracing technology and data strategy for the State of New Jersey as a Senior Fellow with the NJ Office of Innovation. Over the last 25 years he has worked in data intelligence with companies and federal, state and local governments, including as New York City’s first Chief Analytics Officer under Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
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Connor Spelliscy is helping lead the Task Force’s contact tracing/exposure notification initiative. Connor is Director of New Platforms at Hangar, one of the co-founders of the Task Force.
Here’s how that first part of the day will be broken out into individual panels:
- Contact tracing: What it is, how it works, how tech can help [11:00-11:45am ET] PANELISTS: Andrew McLaughlin, Margaret Bourdeaux, Mary Grey, Jonathan Zittrain, Mona Sloane
- Using technology to enable scaled contact tracing [11:45am-12:05pm ET] MODERATOR: Daniel Burka PANELISTS: Randall Thomas and Jonathan Jackson
- Deep dive into the states/city [12:05-12:30pm ET] MODERATOR: Harper Reed PANELISTS: Daniel Burka, Mike Flowers
12:30pm-2pm EDT: Contact Tracing/Exposure Notification Product Demos – Leading organizations developing applications to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, primarily through contact tracing and exposure notification, will each demo their product. Teams include:
- COVIDSafe
- CoEPI
- Covid Trace
- NOVID
- How We Feel
- COVID Near You
- Zero
- COVID Shield
- COVID SafePaths
- Covid Watch
- Healthy Together
- Coalition App
We’ll have a live stream available on June 3 so you can follow along, as mentioned, but you can also RSVP here to register your interest. It should be a day full of interesting, expert discussion of why there’s a need to extend contact tracing and exposure notification through connected and digital means, as well as the privacy, public health and policy implications such extension necessarily carries with it.
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