Dec 2019, we know that COVID-19 was first identified in China, and in the middle of 2020, almost all countries in the world got infected with it. While COVID-19 arises, there is a need for the public to travel between Malaysia and all over the world, but we also need to make sure that the travellers are safe and not transmitting the disease to Malaysia.
To make sure the travellers are safe to come, they need to have a negative test for COVID-19 at that time as a standard precaution. The problems are first, how to make sure the test is legal, and second, which laboratories are allowed to issue the certificate and can be used as a legal document.
To answer the questions above, TracVirus has come to be a solution for travellers who want to come to Malaysia easily and make sure that they are not infected with COVID-19. In the meantime, TracVirus also accommodates policy changes from the Government and directly informs travellers when there are changes in how they are travelling.
The most important of this application is the flexibility of the app to adapt to policy changes from the Government. As we know when handling COVID-19, there was no standard protocol at that time. So, we need to adapt the protocol which is issued by the Government which can change weekly or monthly. After adaptation, we need to deploy our application as fast as possible.
Another challenge is how we store travellers' sensitive data which includes Passport ID, Credit Card Number, or even lab certificates. We need to make sure only the authorities, and users have this access.
As time goes on, the stakeholder is increasing, at first, it is only between the airport and the laboratory. But when the quarantine protocol was issued, there were other stakeholders which are the hotel and transportation. It forced users to have a lot of paperwork when visiting Malaysia.
We solve the problem of flexibility and adaptability by using Ruby on Rails. This framework is able to produce a secure, fast, flexible, and adaptive application as needed on this project. We launch our application in only a month. Also, we can adapt to any changes in Government policy for at least a week after it's issued.
How we save and store all the application data is also important. All our data at that time was saved by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) Protocol. We also make sure only the correct authorities can access the data.
Integration between stakeholders is very important. We want to make sure that it's not difficult for users to carry any paper or access the application. We come up with a solution by using the 1 QR Code for every transaction. So every stakeholder can identify the travellers and all necessary information will show up. This is a win-win solution for Authorities and for users.
The website has been already used by more than a thousand users in Malaysia and is already a standard of use in Malaysia while COVID-19 arises. There are no single cases of data leaks since the app was launched.
