Audrey Tang

The leading map still use the Google Maps technologies, this time sponsored by Google, waiving the API usage fees. This is not about an in-house map that replace the Google Maps. This is more about a real-time API that obviates the need of the customers queuing in line doing the manual reporting or the pharmacists doing the manual reporting for the map so it could be automated.

Yeah. Howard created the initial map. We forked that idea. Then Finjon Kiang and then Howard’s friends at the Google developer group forked that a little bit more. People who prefer a chatbots learned from Frank’s fork of the HTC DeepQ team, which is the team that Frank worked in. That become very popular as well.

At the end of the day or the week, there’s more than one hundred different forks all working with the same data source but visualizing or speaking or however displaying the data in various different ways that’s more inclusive. Depending on your modality, your preferred way to receive the information, you will choose the voice assistance or the chatbot and so on.

In Taiwan, we have a single-payer national healthcare system. This healthcare system ensured that anyone who, for example, refill on their chronic prescriptions in any of the pharmacies, the pharmacist can check that they did not dispense the same prescriptions somewhere else within the same timeframe. That is one of the use cases. There’s many other use cases.

In order to do that, they need to have a high-speed link to the National Health Insurance registry. Also, in order to identify this person is the same person, we have an IC card that, back in 2003, when SARS 1.0 came, it’s on small-scale pilot testing in Penghu, in the Pescadore Island, and not on the main island of Taiwan or any of the other islands.

It turns out having an IC card is really helpful when there is a pandemic because you can do rationing at basically zero cost reusing existing infrastructure.

In the time since 2003, the IC card has been used for pretty much all the hospitals, all the pharmacies, all the clinics, and so that the same person going to different clinics can access all the prescriptions and all the records, X-ray scans, or whatever using just that card and their home computer or phone, as the case may be now.

This is basic infrastructure that covers 99.99 percent of not just citizens but also residents. Anyone who work in Taiwan for more than half a year also get this national IC card.

The pharmacists, basically, they need to learn two new things. First, when the mask shipments comes every day, they need to key that in into a new page of the National Health Insurance system that tells the world, the 100 visualization developers, that, “Hey, I have received my daily ration.”

Next, they need to, whenever anyone swipe their IC card, to check whether this someone has already collected their mask ration somewhere else within the same time period so there’s no double spending or double buying of medical mask across different pharmacies. That’s the two thing that they have to learn.

I’m referring to myself as a liaison to the developer side that take care of the National Health Insurance system and the pharmacy system, but also Howard Wu, Finjon Kiang, Frank, and many other people who are very eager to display this real-time availability to the population. These two sides do not always have the same goal or the same incentive.

For example, the pharmacists, initially, many of them would actually, instead of swiping the National Health Insurance card and handing out the mask, some of them actually collected all the cards in the morning in exchange of the take-a-number system…

And tell the people to take back those numbers on the evenings and get their rationed mask while they, in the lunch break and so on, processed the IC cards. That’s called batch processing. It saves some time for the pharmacist, but it also renders the map completely useless.

On the map, you will see that this pharmacy has the most number of masks, but suddenly, around lunch breaks, drops to zero. Actually, they’ve already handed out those numbers way before that. It creates discrepancies between the two visions of reality.

It’s my job to say sorry to the pharmacist, to say, “We apologize. We didn’t anticipate the take-a-number system. We promise we will fix it next Thursday. We will add one extra column to the data so that you can declare ‘We’re open from 9:00 to 10:00 to send the IC cards in. We’re open again from 6:00 to 7:00 to collect your rationed mask,’ for example.”

The computer code need to be changed not on Howard and Finjon and Frank’s side but also on our side of the National Health Insurance system. Then the pharmacist will tell me, “Hey, I want to click something and disappear from the map soon as my last take-a-number card hands out.” We also implemented that.

There’s a lot of details like this. My work is mostly just like a facilitator, a bridge between the civic technologist on one side and the pharmacist and the government technologist on the other.

These are not N95 mask. The problem of N95 masks that we learned the hard way during SARS 1.0 is that there really is a lot of self-discipline required to wear it all day long because they are kind of thick.

The medical mask that we mean is that it has a good bacterial filtration efficiency as well as particle filtration efficiency and virus filtration efficiency as well. There’s national standards to test those. These are extremely lightweight so it doesn’t inhibit your breathing that much. You can wear it for all day without feeling that you’re choking or something.

Yeah, it’s something like that. What you’re referring to are surgical masks, which is a kind of medical mask. What we’re saying is that of course it’s not quite surgical level that’s needed. We just need good virus filtration capabilities. It’s something like surgical mask but even thinner so that you can wear it for even longer amount of time.

Probably do. We send a lot of them to United States, actually.

Also, we share the blueprints of how to make the autonomous plants that just churns two millions of these out every day in the blueprint that we share. I’m pretty sure that you do have that. Most of the Taiwanese people nowadays do not rely on the rationed mask anymore.

Although the rationing is still going on, there’s a lot of masks on the market that are slightly more expensive but carries a – I don’t know – fashion statement or political statement. [laughs] That’s becoming more of a fashion item now. This is still medical mask but just colored differently.

It’s a rainbow mask that is designed for the pride parade, Taiwan being one of the very few places in the world this year to have a physical pride parade. This is just celebrating that. If you just allow me a couple of seconds…

The same vendor that makes most of the rationed masks are also making these so-called my color or fashion mask line. This, while not being a rainbow mask, are rainbow-colored if you take all the six masks that I’m holding. [laughs]

These are all medical-grade masks. They are all colored quite differently. These become fashion items that people wear to express themselves, which is great because it means that they keep it on for a longer amount of time.

It’s just colored in a fashionable way, I guess.

[laughs] The point is that because we sell the mask using the idea of rational self-interest, we say, “You wear those medical mask to protect yourself against your own unwashed hands.” That’s the entire message that was sent.

Yeah, 14 days. That’s exactly right. They either go to a quarantine hotel, where they are physically barred from leaving for 14 days. Or if they have a flat with a bathroom to their own, then they can choose home quarantine.

In which case, their phone – if they don’t have a phone, we give them a phone for a couple weeks – is put into the digital quarantine, in which case, they can’t turn off the phone. The phone need to stay in that general quarter.

We do not use an app. It’s not GPS or Bluetooth or WiFi or whatever. It’s just cell phone tower strength. We don’t know which room they’re in, but we do know, to 50-meter radius or so, the general vicinity, which district, which block they are in.

If the phone turns off or if the phone goes outside of that perimeter, that fence, then a SMS is sent automatically not only to them but the local health officers.

That’s exactly right, for 14 days. If they stay in the quarantine for 14 days, every day we pay them around $33 US as a stipend. If they break the quarantine and gets discovered by the medical officer, then they pay us back 1,000 times that as a fine, so they don’t tend to break the quarantine.

That’s right.

Darian What if their phone just runs out of batteries?

The medical officer will show up. If the phone really has a bad battery or something, we help them to replace the battery. The point is that when the medical officer or the police shows up, then you better be at home.

That’s right.

Yeah. From time to time, we may also SMS them, asking, “What’s your temperature? Do you have any COVID-like symptoms? Also, what do you think about this experience? Can you suggest better improvements?”

That’s right. Or they can pay a fine that will support 1,000 people for a day.

I think the whole point of quarantining is making sure that each of us who return to Taiwan suffer from this 14 days of quarantine. I will not pretend that it’s not a huge restriction on freedom of movement or the freedom of walking your dog, but it’s fair. It’s time-limited. It’s just 14 days.

We do everything we can to give the care packs and things like [laughs] that to make sure that you stay well and healthy and have good access to broadband.

When people in the quarantine hotels and quarantine places email me, some of them email me saying, “Hey we don’t have broadband here. Minister, you promised 10 megabits per second as a human right. We don’t have that human right because a building that’s blocking it from a telecom tower.”

Within a couple weeks, we actually set up a new telecom tower just to make sure that they can watch their movies during the quarantine. The whole point of ensuring a good experience is that people don’t feel the social stigma or the financial burden of those 14 days.

After they get released, they know, because it’s not an app or anything – it’s just cell phone tower strength – they couldn’t be labeled as such, profiled as such, subject to targeted advertisements or whatever discrimination because each of us need to go through 14 days. It applies equally to everyone returning to Taiwan.

I think this is the kind of idea, the rational self-interest, that basically says if you comply with this 14 days, for a while you may lose some of the freedom of movement, but in the long run, it means you can go to the pride parade.

We never had a community spread, so we never had a lockdown. If you’re one of the few people that did get the local transmission mostly in the early February and March, of course, you’re also subject to home isolation, which is the same as home quarantine, except instead of a medical officer showing up, it will be the police showing up. [laughs] Otherwise, this is the same idea, yes.

Because if you are already confirmed with COVID, then just walking about is a public danger. Instead of quarantining which because we’re not sure whether you have COVID or not, once you’re diagnosed, you’re then prohibited from infecting more people.

That’s right.

Yeah, very few, actually.

In Taiwan, it’s been more than 200 days, was no local transmissions. It’s a low number. [laughs] All in all, I think it’s around 600 people who are confirmed.