Quarantine Agent – Robotic artificial intelligence agents for compliance
Quarantine Agent uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist in enforcing quarantine policies, reducing exposure to COVID-19 for government agencies and health departments, allowing them to deploy resources where required.
Pandemics such as COVID-19 present new challenges to government bodies tasked with flattening the curve to protect the health and safety of the population.
DXC Technology’s Quarantine Agent allows government agencies, including health departments and police, to effectively manage citizens or visitors who have tested positive for COVID-19 and are required to self-isolate, as well as those who have been in close contact with them.
How Quarantine Agent works
Designed to effectively support suppression through self-isolation and social distancing, Quarantine Agent is delivered as software as a service (SaaS). It uses a secure web-based platform, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, to create a virtual quarantine enforcement agent. This not only reduces exposure for human agents but also frees them up to investigate instances that have been escalated by the robot agents.
Registration and onboarding
Participants can be easily onboarded onto the system. Governments, law enforcement and health services can issue instructions – either written or via SMS or email – for an individual participant or group to register with Quarantine Agent.
This registration process simply requires the submission of a mobile number via a secure web form, after which participants are required to check in within a certain time period. They are sent a message to:
1. Click on the link to open a web page in order to capture evidence of compliance.
2. Accept the requirement to provide temporary access to their location information.
3. Take a selfie against a recognisable background at that location (e.g. home, hotel, clinic, hospital or dedicated facility) within a specified period of time.
Audit cycle for self-isolation
Participants are randomly audited for compliance with quarantine conditions via a text message that contains a unique link. Participants check in via the web app by taking a selfie in the same spot each time. A robot agent is instantiated and tracks that audit until it is satisfied or escalated, at which point it terminates.
If required by policy, the participant may also need to hold up a specified word or number written on a piece of paper. This is meant to prevent the individual from taking a photo in advance and having someone else submit it. Geo-tagging and date/time stamps are also used.
Analysis and escalation
Evidence submitted is analysed by the allocated robot agent and, if required, escalated to a human via a ticketing system, such as Atlassian Jira or Salesforce. Timeouts are configurable and should be set to give the participant enough time to respond to the message, bearing in mind that the individual may be otherwise engaged, but not long enough to allow a participant who has left home to return. It is recommended to set timeouts of two to five minutes.
The system will usually give the participant a second chance to respond, typically in a shorter period of time (one to three minutes). If the individual does not respond at all, it is necessary to engage a human agent to follow up by voice or video call or an in-person visit. Random audits can be coordinated for a time when a human agent is in the neighbourhood to allow for immediate escalation and investigation. For high-volume deployments it is recommended that this process be integrated with call centre systems so that the call is automatically placed, and the participant’s timeline is automatically retrieved for the agent. This service can also be provided by DXC’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service.
Quarantine Agent uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is a cloud-native serverless architecture, which is highly secure and scalable. Evidence collection is accomplished using a secure web browser rather than a mobile application that can impair user experience and invade privacy. Shortly after the quarantine period has finished, storage policies ensure automatic and secure deletion of the participant’s data. Quarantine Agent is hosted and managed in Australia.
For more information on DXC’s Quarantine Agent, download the FAQs or talk to an expert via the button below.