In early 2020, governments around the world faced an unfamiliar challenge: how to slow the spread of a virus that transmits before symptoms appear. Traditional public-health tools such as manual contact tracing struggled to keep up with the speed and scale of COVID-19.
This gap sparked global interest in digital contact tracing. Not as a replacement for public-health systems, but as a way to support faster, more proactive intervention. In this context, Dolphin Technologies contributed its telematics and proximity-detection expertise to the development of a COVID-19 contact-tracing app – built in weeks, open-sourced, and made available free of charge.
This article looks back at that initiative to highlight what it revealed about COVID-19 contact tracing apps, privacy-first design, behavioral adoption, and the role of digital tools in large-scale risk prevention.
Why COVID-19 contact tracing mattered early
One of the defining characteristics of COVID-19 was its ability to spread before symptoms became visible. Studies showed that infected individuals could be contagious for days before realizing they were ill, while incubation periods stretched up to two weeks.
From a risk-management perspective, this created a clear problem: by the time someone tested positive, transmission chains were often already well established. The value of contact tracing lay not in identifying who was sick, but in warning others early enough to change behavior – self-isolate, seek testing, or reduce exposure.
Digital tools offered a way to scale this process beyond what manual tracing alone could achieve.
Designing COVID-19 contact tracing without location tracking
A central challenge for contact-tracing apps was public trust. Adoption would only work if people felt confident that the technology did not create a permanent record of their movements.
For this reason, the app developed by Dolphin and the NOVID20 initiative was designed around Bluetooth-based proximity detection rather than GPS tracking.
The core principle was simple:
- Smartphones exchange anonymous, rotating identifiers via Bluetooth when they are in close proximity
- Encounters are stored locally on the device, not in a central movement database
- No location data is collected or shared
If a user later reports a confirmed infection, the system can notify other users who were nearby during the relevant period – without revealing identities or movement histories.
This approach reflected a broader lesson from telematics and insurance: privacy-by-design is not a compliance checkbox, but a prerequisite for adoption.
From individual alerts to population-level impact in contact tracing apps
When used at scale, proximity-based alerts allow people to adjust behavior earlier than traditional systems would allow. Instead of waiting for symptoms or official outreach, individuals receive timely information and can act immediately.
This shifts the role of digital tools from passive reporting to active prevention:
- Breaking infection chains earlier
- Reducing peak load on healthcare systems
- Supporting public-health decision-making with faster feedback loops
In practice, the app was deployed on both iOS and Android and used in several regions, including Georgia, where authorities emphasized speed and simplicity as key advantages during early rollout.
Inclusion beyond smartphones in digital contact tracing
One of the most overlooked challenges in digital health is accessibility. The people most at risk from COVID-19 – particularly elderly populations – were also the least likely to own or regularly use smartphones.
To address this, the solution included Bluetooth beacons in the form of simple key fobs. These devices allowed proximity detection without requiring a phone, while still enabling notifications via phone call or SMS if an exposure occurred.
This hybrid approach underscored an important insight: effective prevention tools must adapt to real-world behavior and limitations, rather than assuming ideal user conditions.
What this project revealed about digital prevention
Although developed in response to an extraordinary crisis, the contact-tracing app highlighted principles that extend well beyond public health:
- Speed matters: weeks, not years, can make a difference when risk grows exponentially
- Privacy enables participation: people engage when control and transparency are built in
- Prevention beats reaction: early warnings are more effective than late interventions
- Inclusion drives impact: solutions must work for diverse populations, not just early adopters
These principles align closely with Dolphin’s broader work in mobility and insurance – where timely, contextual signals help individuals and institutions act before damage occurs.
A reference point, not a core product
The COVID-19 contact-tracing app was never intended to become a long-term commercial product. It was a pro-bono, open-source contribution made possible by Dolphin’s experience in proximity detection, behavioral data, and large-scale system design.
As a reference implementation, it demonstrated how digital technology can support societal resilience when aligned with clear objectives and responsible design choices.
What COVID-19 contact tracing apps revealed for future risk prevention
Crises tend to accelerate learning. In the case of COVID-19, they also clarified what people expect from digital systems that affect their daily lives: usefulness, restraint, and respect for personal boundaries.
Whether applied to public health, mobility safety, or insurance risk prevention, the lesson remains the same. Technology creates value not by collecting more data – but by enabling better decisions, earlier, and with trust.
