COVID-19 response: Saudi Arabia’s comprehensive pandemic management app

By Mark D. Minevich, President, Global Ventures and Chief Digital Strategist, International Research Centre on AI

Saudi Arabia’s national COVID-19 containment app, Tawakkalna, has proven a critical digital asset in the Kingdom’s fight against the pandemic.

The current system aims to optimize COVID-19 levels of management as it links with the user’s personal health records to provide fast and accurate information on any given individual. In addition, Tawakkalna has helped boost the accessibility and use of digital services throughout the country – a benefit likely to endure far beyond the current pandemic.

Tawakkalna has greatly helped Saudi Arabia maintain a comparatively low incidence of COVID-19 cases with less than 2 per cent of the population infected up to the end of 2021. Tawakkalna has also maintained high user satisfaction rates, close to 88 per cent throughout the year 2021. Another promising use case for Tawakkalna is informing the next phase of digital identification development in Saudi Arabia, as the app has already gathered a lot of valuable user information.

Preparing for future health challenges

The ongoing experience with COVID-19 underlines how technology can help address future pandemics and other public health issues.

Future challenges will demand even more from governments, citizens, and private organizations as we all strive to make sure we are better prepared to protect health and well-being in a connected society.

Tawakkalna has proven itself a valuable resource – one that could provide enormous value worldwide whenever pandemic containment issues arise.

The app’s effectiveness in Saudi Arabia offers a possible model for other countries to follow as they seek to contain pandemic outbreaks.

From the standpoint of international development agencies, Tawakkalna could stand as a best practice example of pandemic management, containment, and successful product development against all odds.

Since Tawakkalna’s inception, it has made the transition much easier by providing curfew movement permissions and facilitating COVID-19 tests and vaccine appointments. By now, Tawakkalna has the largest user base of any other government app in the region. To avoid the fate of many COVID-19 apps being retired once the pandemic is under control, the Saudi government has ambitions to transform Tawakkalna into a “super app” to maximize the benefit of the investment made and help accelerate the digital transformation of the Kingdom.

What other countries can learn from this

Over the last two years, Tawakkalna has given Saudi Arabia maximum cost-effectiveness and return on investment in its crucial efforts to limit the spread of the infection. Other nations could emulate this Saudi success story by doing the following:

• Encourage collaboration between not only government entities, but also concerned organizations of the private sector as they can prove essential in providing the necessary enablement
• Offer incentives and create effective information campaigns to get people to sign up and provide their needed details
• Pay attention to what citizens and residents want from their government and deliver on their needs in a high-quality manner centered around optimal user experience
• Use the system to promote greater social cohesion
• Support research into pandemic containment systems and ways to prevent future pandemics

These are the key actions behind the Saudi Arabian COVID-19 containment system and its successful example of pandemic management and containment.

Looking further ahead, the inclusive, consultative development approach was crucial to maximize Tawakkalna’s accessibility and familiarize people throughout the country with digital services. In the long run, this could be the app’s greatest achievement, among Saudi Arabia’s other digital accomplishments.

*Any views expressed in this opinion article do not necessarily reflect the views of ITU.

Image credit: Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images