Digital technologies for monitoring infected people, identifying contacts and tracking transmission chains in the corona virus disease 2019 pandemic: A protocol for a systematic review

BACKGROUND: In times of the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, due to the urgent need to respond quickly to the challenges posed by the introduction of a new etiological agent and the peculiarity of the disease, which poses risks to people's lives and health, the use of digital technologies for monitoring and surveillance have been used as a means of fighting coronavirus. Thus, this study will identify the use of digital technologies to monitor, identify contacts and track transmission chains of COVID-19 worldwide. METHODS: The systematic review of this protocol will follow the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes Protocols. We will include studies that present digital technologies used in the monitoring of infected people, contact identification and the transmission chain of COVID-19 developed worldwide. For the selection of articles, the following databases will be consulted: PubMed, EMBASE, LILACS, Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Livivo and CINAHL. In addition, we will conduct extensive research on selected sources of gray literature, including bibliographic databases, web-based search engines, practice-oriented magazines and government websites. Data extraction will take place in 2 stages (1- title and abstract screening and 2- full-text screening) and will be carried out independently by 2 reviewers, using the Mendeley software and the Rayyan QCRI application. The studies will be characterized as to the type and design of the study in relation to the ease in demonstrating the technologies used and the type of information produced. If it is necessary to synthesize quantitative data, the heterogeneity assessment will be performed using I2 statistics, and the meta-analysis will be processed using Review Manager 5.3. RESULTS: The development of this research will allow the knowledge of how these technologies were applied according to each territory and their effectiveness in reducing cases of COVID-19. CONCLUSION: The results of this review can reveal the importance of modern technologies for reducing cases of COVID-19 and that these measures can be adopted by governments, organizations and for everyone RECORD OF SYSTEMATIC REVIEW: CRD42020211744.