Bluetooth wristband can make COVID-19 lockdowns unnecessary

Nordic Semiconductor announces Spanish engineering company, Accent Systems, has developed a 'COVID-19 BLE wristband' that they claim could assist in containing and preventing the accelerated spread of the virus through high accuracy contact tracing of individuals who test positive for the disease. In doing so, Accent says many large-scale lockdowns can be avoided as only individuals at risk of contracting the virus would be needed to go into quarantine, rather than every member of a given population, as is the case across the world at the moment.

"Our wristband is a much more effective alternative to confining an entire population which does not 100% guarantee that transmission of the virus is stopped as a new outbreak may appear at any time," comments Accent Systems CEO, Jordi Casamada.

"What's really great about our solution is that the identity of each wearer is both encrypted and GDPR compliant, meaning only authorised authorities can access the data, and only when required," adds Casamada. "Otherwise, the whole system is completely anonymous and collected data automatically deleted after 15 to 30 days."

"What's already become very clear in the battle against COVID-19 is the power of the IoT and accurate data analytics to help track down and significantly reduce the infection rate of this terrible virus," concludes Geir Langeland, Nordic Semiconductor director of sales and marketing. "But I am also extremely encouraged by a growing trend among the world's leading product and engineering companies to step forward and develop low-cost solutions at extremely high speed that can help governments and healthcare authorities around the world turn the tide in the battle against this invisible killer."

Nordic's nRF52832 multiprotocol SoC combines a 64MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with FPU, with a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting Bluetooth 5, ANT, and proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol software) and features -96dB RX sensitivity, with 512kB Flash memory and 64kB RAM.

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