HIGHLIGHTS:

• Asia and the Pacific heavily rely on travel and tourism. 
• Public confidence in traveling needs to be regained following the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• Technology can be used to help the public regain their trust in travel and tourism and make transportation safer. 

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FAST FACTS:

Country: Indonesia  

Year of implementation: 2021

Technology: Artificial intelligence   

ADB Department: Climate Change and Sustainable Development Department (formerly Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department)

ADB Partners: 

• International Civil Aviation Organization
• International Air Transport Association
• Pacific Travel Association
• MyHealth Diary (Investo Media Asia)—technology service provider

In line with ADB’s Operational Priorities:

• Fostering regional cooperation and integration 
• Greater and higher quality connectivity between economies
• Global and regional trade and investment opportunities expanded 

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BACKGROUND  

New protocols were needed to restore the public’s trust in the safety of travel in 2021, following the global lockdowns that were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  This was particularly important for countries in Asia and the Pacific that heavily rely on tourism for income generation. In 2019, nearly 10% of the region’s GDP came from travel and tourism.1 

Innovation is necessary to help the public feel safe from infection even while traveling. Towards this end, ADB, in collaboration with the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Air Transport Association, the Pacific Travel Association, and other stakeholders, opened a challenge wherein interested parties could propose digital solutions that would help regain people’s trust in travel.   

SOLUTION 

The chosen solution was MyHealth Diary app, which originally featured a database of various diseases and healthcare facilities in Indonesia but added a new section on COVID-19 care in 2020. ADB supported the integration of the Health Passport feature, which was developed by the MyHealth Diary team in collaboration with several government institutions, including the Jakarta Provincial Health Department (Dinas Kesehatan DKI Jakarta) and the Jakarta City Transportation Council (Dewan Transportasi Kota Jakarta). This feature was intended to support efforts to track, trace, and monitor users’ health conditions and indicate whether or not they are safe to travel.  Users could use the app to conduct daily self-checks and see if they were showing early symptoms of COVID-19 instead of immediately going to medical facilities that were already overburdened with handling COVID-19 cases.  

ADB’s seed funding also financed the procurement of 100 wearables, which were synchronized with the app so users could easily monitor their daily health data.  

Other features of the COVID-19 care service included online booking for an RT-PCR test, ordering of medicine, and information on health facilities in Jakarta. Vaccination certificates could also be uploaded to the app and presented as a supporting document to enter public places.  

TECHNOLOGY 

Artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the app to enable it to determine whether the user is safe to travel based on certain health indicators, e.g., temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen, and blood pressure, which can also be collected by the wearables or manually entered on the app. Specifically, thresholds were set per indicator based on medical standards to identify whether a user fell within the normal range, which is also shown on the app, or if their health condition may put them and/or other travelers at risk of getting sick. Daily data could be collected and visualized through a chart so users could track whether their health, through the indicators, has changed over several days.  

The app used the vital sign data that has been entered to categorize users into one of three statuses: green for low risk/minimum risk, yellow for moderate risk, and red for high risk of health issues.  

MyHealth Diary partnered with institutions to promote their app, which was came with a scanner feature so it could be used to scan the QR codes generated by the app to determine who would be allowed to enter based on their health status.  

RESULTS 

The Health Passport feature of MyHealth Diary was presented as one of the travel documents that residents could use within and outside the region. 

A hundred wearables were distributed to users, but there were transfers of device ownership, leading to 150 individuals testing the Health Passport feature with wearables. Meanwhile, 470 individuals used the Health Passport feature without wearables.  

The application was designed to prompt users to confirm and adjust the data in case of false detection, or when potential errors with the data were detected. Additionally, a feedback mechanism was also integrated so users could flag potential errors.