Contact tracing for COVID. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Is there a better way? Serial entrepreneur Richard Allen is the co-founder of Alert Trace, a wearable electronic contact tracing system. Operating via Bluetooth, the device doesn’t need GPS, meaning fewer privacy concerns and less battery power. The system will soon be implemented by the US Navy, US Air Force, and NASA. One-time electrician, mechanic, sound director, record store owner and accountant, Allen has done a bit of everything. He also has launched four companies onto the NASDAQ, and with his wife runs a non-profit that helps rural villages in Cambodia “create a sustainable quality of life."

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

Contact tracing for COVID. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Is there a better way? Welcome to Radio Cade . I'm your host Richard Miles. And today I'm talking to Richard Allen entrepreneur par excellent. And Co - Founder of Alert, Trace a wearable electronic contract contact tracing system . Sorry, welcome to the show, Richard.

Richard Allen: 0:58

Thanks. Great to be here.

Richard Miles: 0:59

So first things first, have you always gone by Richard? Cause as one Richard to another, you know, people always want a short it into Rich, Rick or even worse, but this is a family show, but you've always gone by Richard.

Richard Allen: 1:09

Yeah. I've gone by a lot of names, but yeah, Richard's fine.

Richard Miles: 1:13

Good and full disclosure for our listeners. Richard is on the board of the Cade Museum and his company is also a tenant in a commercial property. My wife and I own. And that's what it's like to live in a small college town. You just can't get away from each other. So just putting that out there for everyone. So Richard, like a lot of entrepreneurs, it seems you've done a little bit of everything and we'll talk about that in detail later on. But before we get into that, let's focus on Alert Trace your current endeavor. If I understand it, it's specifically for COVID contact tracing, but now we know there's already a lot of stuff out there, including our own smartphones that can be used also to do this. So why don't we start by how is Alert. Trace different than those other existing devices that are out there to do contact tracing?

Richard Allen: 1:53

Yeah. So Alert Trace is a standalone system that involves small devices. So we build the small devices, the small alert trace devices, which are using Bluetooth to determine the distance between one device and another device and individuals in a work environment of some sort or an organizational environment would all be AltEd with the devices. And it basically just keeps track over time. How close have they been to other people on the team so that if anybody on the team winds up contracting COVID or any other infectious disease, at some point you can go back over any time period that you wish a week, two weeks, whatever. At that time the CDC is saying as the infectious disease cycle, and you can find everybody that they were in c