Increasing Adoption of Critical Digital Health Applications

Author: Harshini Jayaram

Executive Summary

The PathCheck Foundation was founded as part of the fight against the COVID-19 global pandemic. One of their core focuses was the creation of a contact tracing application that is currently used in several jurisdictions. Looking forward, they are planning for other digital health related applications, potentially including digital health/vaccine passports. Applications like these, which serve to improve public health, are most effective with high adoption. However, digital health applications require users to share personal and private information such as detailed recent location tracking or a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. Thus, given the particularly sensitive nature of contact tracing and similar applications, growing adoption requires building trust with users. This trust can be built through multiple sources, such as the institutions promoting the use of contact tracing, the organizations building the applications, or the people recommending a specific application.