The Challenge
A major U.S. state struggled with suboptimal efficiency and effectiveness in its contact tracing program. The incumbent platform suffered from incomplete and/or duplicated records, as it was being fed data from a multitude of healthcare systems and testing facilities. While coronavirus cases surged across the state, successful contacts for outreach attempts averaged around only 40%. The existing system tripled the time it took contact tracers to interview sickened residents or contact anyone who may have been exposed to the affected individual.
When county health departments discovered the data from the centralized platform was unreliable, some counties began opting out of the state system and using their own case management systems instead. With such a serious pandemic requiring coordination, the state realized they needed everybody on the same system. But this required fixing the identity and phone intelligence data needed to support the system.
The Neustar Solution
Neustar creates a persistent identifier for individual- and household-level data aggregation. Integrating directly with the state contact tracing platform via API, Neustar provides the following critical identity and phone intelligence services:
- Automated completion and correction of individual contact record data—including name, address, phone number, and email address—which can also be traced to households
- Information per contact on all available phone numbers, and phone type data (e.g., wireline, wireless, VOIP) to support SMS outreach, as needed
- Registration with all major phone carriers to ensure outbound contact tracing numbers are not errantly blocked or spam-mislabeled
- Monitoring of phone number registration to prevent fraudsters from coopting numbers used for outreach
- Display of the state’s chosen logo and purpose of call on citizen Smartphones; citizens are more likely to answer if they know who is calling and why
The Expected Outcome
Neustar is the neutral provider with integration to the leading mobile apps and over 800+ carriers, providing the state with a centralized approach to a contract tracing program. A centralized approach saves time and minimizes the impacts to the state’s budget. Importantly, it also eliminates the need to go to each individual provider, while ensuring consistency across different providers with reporting, alerts and support.
Neustar enables the state to reach the right person quickly and effectively, allowing effective contact of potentially infected people to decrease infection rates and slow the spread of the virus. Neustar’s unique data assets, already used and proven by the top ten banks and hundreds of top brands, ensure tracers have the most complete and accurate information about each contact prior to outreach.
While the improvement in contact rates for the state are not yet known, Neustar customers typically see a 33% improvement in contact rates after using similar Neustar services.