Critical Limitations of Digital Epidemiology: Why COVID-19 Apps Are Useless
Critical Limitations of Digital Epidemiology: Why COVID-19 Apps Are Useless
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DOI：
10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7726
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发表时间：
2020-01-01
影响因子：
4.8
通讯作者：
Schnell, Rainer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Klingwort, Jonas;Schnell, Rainer
在当前的COVID-19大流行期间，“数字流行病学”已被提出来补充传统的报告和监测系统。智能手机联系人应用程序、健身追踪器和自愿报告应用程序等工具旨在用于监测或限制COVID-19的传播。在公开讨论中，这些工具和手段的方法缺陷和局限性没有得到充分讨论。因此，我们回顾了这些弱点和局限性，使用总调查误差框架来解决这些方法的抽样和非抽样误差。我们认为，对于COVID-19研究，任何建议的数字流行病学方法都无法获得有用的结果。最后，我们为有效和覆盖人群的COVID-19指标体系提出了可行的替代数据来源。
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, "digital epidemiology" has been proposed to complement traditional reporting and surveillance systems. Instruments such as smartphone contact apps, fitness trackers, and apps for voluntary reporting are intended to be used to monitor or limit the spread of COVID-19. The methodological drawbacks and limitations of these instruments and devices are insufficiently addressed in the public discussion. Therefore, we review these weaknesses and limitations, using the Total Survey Error framework to address sampling and non-sampling errors of these approaches. We argue that no useful results can be obtained by any of the suggested methods of digital epidemiology for COVID-19 research. Finally, we suggest feasible alternative data sources for valid and population covering COVID-19 indicator systems.