An inside look at how Trojan Check works

Before anyone can walk on the USC campus, they have to use Trojan Check. It’s a covid-tracking system used by students, faculty, and anyone that wants to visit our college campus. Charlotte Phillipp takes an inside look at how the system functions to get almost 20,000 undergraduates tested for Covid-19 and on to campus so they can get to class on time.

Every single student, staff member, and visitor to USC uses Trojan Check to get on campus every day.

AMBI: *beeping* Thank you. Thanks. Okay.

You fill out the symptoms questionnaire - do you have a fever, do you have a headache, do you have shortness of breath… you know the rest. You make sure your Covid tests and vaccines are updated in the My SHR system. Then, you present your handy QR code to an attendant at any of the campus entrances.

This morning, the line to scan your QR code is particularly long.

More AMBI: *beeping*

But finally, you’re off to class.

It’s complicated to build a system that can track test results, personal vaccine information, and questionnaires all in one place.

USC IT employee Veronica Garcia says a system of this scale doesn’t get made overnight. She was on the team who spearheaded the Trojan Check app project.

VERONICA GARCIA: So there was a taskforce from across campus that came together to just really throw the question of how do we do this? How do we do this? How do we build the technology? Do we buy something? Do we, you know, there really wasn’t a lot about a lot out there at the time.

Every campus department you could imagine got involved.

GARCIA: Researchers, epidemiologists, obviously are part of that committee, but also our Chief Health Officer, Dr. Van Orman, Student Health, even campus operations.

A lot of moving parts all had to come together for this app to work. Garcia explains that the system actually consists of a few technologies all put together.

GARCIA: So first and foremost, the hardest part is bringing the data together we work with, gosh, at least I don’t know, sir, maybe a half a dozen different data sources that we bring together. And then there has to be a real time layer that pulls things back and forth, you make an appointment, that appointment has to be reflected in charge and check so that you can get a badge. So we get that information real time, whether you’ve taken your training in Trojan learn all of those things or different systems, we’re bringing those together through a real time layers that talk to each other.

Garcia also says issues like accessibility and comfort-of-use are essential for this system.

GARCIA: We have engineers who, and designers who are focused on how easy something is to use the ordering that buttons are in, there’s a whole methodology behind whether something’s easy to use, whether it’s accessible, and we’ll work with assistive technologies.

Dr. Jeffrey Klausner is Keck professor of infectious diseases and an expert on Covid. He says systems like Trojan Check may not even be necessary at this point in the pandemic.

JEFFREY KLAUSNER: I mean Trojan Check is just an example one, but they’re used all over the country all over the world in terms of symptom checks and you know reporting on exposures and reporting on you know recent tests that is not aware of any evidence that any of those in two years, have any had any benefit, and in fact the CDC and its own offices does not employed anything like that.

Klausner says underreporting symptoms is also a concern for apps like Trojan Check.

KLAUSNER: So you know these tools, you know they’re they’re not objective right they’re not you know measuring something irrefutable they’re based on someone’s self report, so they give a false sense of security. You know I would be highly suspicious if you know the frequency of fever was you know less than you know 5%.

The rules are changing now for Covid-19 on campus now. A new announcement from USC put an end to weekly testing for all students and staff beginning on March 1. But for now, it seems like Trojan Check will remain in place for as long as the pandemic stretches on.