I was reading CNN news this morning when having breakfast, Chinese President Xi at the recent G20 Summit is pushing for a global COVID-19 tracking system using QR codes to help fast-track international travel and business.
China has mandated using Health QR Codes from February national wide; in the past nine months, the country has gained huge benefits and confidence in control the pandemic.
I introduced the Healthcare QR codes in July 2020, in an event organized by AHIMA International.
Health QR Code is built on shared and interoperable digital technology platforms. It is applied in identifying individual, tracing individual’s locations, and subsequently empowered contact tracing. It is proven, efficient, convenient and useful. It is comprehensive, time accurate in comparison to the various types of apps.
Privacy is considered necessary, public health is equally or maybe even more important as China has gone through SARS. People are more willing to be disciplined for their safety and society’s protection.
Health QR Codes provide an option to international travellers to enter into China, presumably earlier down the road.
The key sentence in Dr. Shao’s blog is “.. people are more willing to be disciplined for their safety and society’s protection”. That’s what is missing in the US and Europe. But QR codes could be used there as well on an incentive basis. The mobile phone market is a duopoly between Google and Apple. Governments have spent billions helping protect companies from failure, but here is a chance for both Google and Apple to receive incentive payments for every customer who has signed up for a QR code. Through those companies, a monthly reduction in user’s phone bill could be passed on as long as they have the QR code in use. I wish this would have been in use since Spring 2020.