Podcast: Contact tracing of COVID-19 faces 6 key challenges in providing help to slow the spread of the virus

Robert McKay, Senior Vice President of Risk Solutions at Neustar discusses with Don Witt of The Channel Daily News, a TR publication, how the contact tracing process and technology is evolving.  Currently, in its early stages, some serious challenges need to be overcome prior to providing effective results and information for state and local governments to reduce the spread of a virus and to provide resources to affected citizens. Robert McKay Based on information from 200 contact tracers in 39 states, Neustar takes the lead in trying to help the process mature as quickly as possible enabling faster responses and the saving of countless number of lives. Want to understand contact tracing - listen to Robert McKay - an expert in the field. Fueled by start-up energy nonetheless. Neustar was literally born to manage large datasets. In 1997, while still a part of Lockheed Martin, they won the contract to administer the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). That’s numbers as in phone numbers, which people could finally port. It created a massive database in need of a neutral steward to give telephone companies equal access to everybody’s digits. To ensure that neutrality, in 1999 they were divested by Lockheed Martin and renamed Neustar. Years later, number portability in the United States remains the global standard for convenience and efficiency. As the first to deliver cloud-based information services and analytics to inform high-volume, high-value decisions in real time – one interaction at a time – they’ve diversified their information services quite a bit, adding to the critical datasets they manage. For more information, go to: https://www.home.neustar/