Service Objects Service Improves Data Quality for COVID-19 Contact Tracing by Government Agencies
Contact validation tools increase the speed and accuracy of critical tracing activities.
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Service Objects, a leading provider of real-time global contact validation solutions, is currently offering government agencies and public health
authorities at all levels access to its services to assist in their contact tracing initiatives. These efforts are critical for reducing the spread of
the current COVID-19 outbreak and enabling businesses to reopen.
Contact tracing, which involves the rapid identification and notification of people who have potentially been exposed to the COVID-19 virus, is
described by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as “a key strategy for preventing the further spread of COVID-19.” Given the potential for
community transmission of the disease, timely and accurate tracing activities are critical to flattening the curve of infections. Service
Objects’ tools and services assist these efforts by verifying that contact data is accurate, genuine, and up-to-date at the point of entry, using
continuously updated official and proprietary data sources.
Despite the media buzz around new apps purported to be the solution for contact tracing, the reality is that many states and counties still use a
manual process for collecting this data. Manual data entry suffers from an increased risk of errors which can result in delays in contacting
individuals who may have been exposed. Service Objects can help optimize this process through phone lookup services, address verification and
validation, change of address updates, geocoding, and name standardization. Its technical experts can assist state and local public health departments
in rapidly implementing automated contact validation tools to help ensure faster and more reliable contact tracing.
“Service Objects is committed to using our services for the public good, including helping government agencies deploy their contact tracing programs
as quickly as possible,” said Geoff Grow, CEO of Service Objects. “When we speak with agencies directly, we take a sample of their data, which our
engineers examine and run through our services to best suit what contact data they need fixed, appended, etc. We provide a free consultation to
review the results of their sample and discuss how contact validation APIs can get their contact tracing efforts up and running more quickly. This
saves them from having to they would have to review all 26 of our APIs, request trial keys, and other steps, which could be a more daunting task.
“In addition, many who are leading these efforts do not have the same knowledge of what contact validation can actually do, so we are sharing
best practices with them.”