The UK will use new contact tracing app with the help of Apple and Google. This will help UK detect and trace people that have been exposed to the coronavirus.
The UK Health Minister Matt Hancock confirmed it to BBC on Thursday.
“We’ve agreed to join forces with Google and Apple, to bring the best bits of both systems together,” said Hancock.
The use of the U-turn involves a technical barrier, Hancock said at the daily Downing Street briefing in London.
“We found that our app works well on Android devices, but Apple software prevents iPhones being used effectively for contact-tracing unless you’re using Apple’s own technology,” he said.
NHSX, the innovation department of the National Health Service, initially planned to develop its own app without the assistance of Apple and Google.
However, after the UK started developing its app, Apple and Google unveiled their own product. Since the announcement, the UK has been developing two versions of the app, Hancock revealed.
“As it stands, our app won’t work because Apple won’t change their system,” Hancock noted. “But it can measure distance, and their app can’t measure distance well enough to a standard that we are satisfied with.”
Contact tracing
In the new model, Hancock said the UK wants to integrate the NHSX algorithm and its work on distance calculations with Apple and Google’s product.
Contact-tracing apps function when two individuals have been in close proximity to one another for a long time. If someone has the virus, the app will send an alert to people they have been in close contact with.
Apple and Google’s platform aims to provide citizens more privacy but it does not give epidemiologists the entire data.
Germany, Italy and Denmark have abandoned their so-called “centralized” approach that processes data on a state-controlled server. They welcome Apple and Google’s “dencentralized” approach, where data is analyzed on the handset itself, thereby reducing privacy issues.
According to the UK government, the NHSX’s contact-tracing app played a huge role in lifting the country’s coronavirus lockdown and that it would help prevent a second wave of the coronavirus.
The development of the UK app began in March. Apple and Google said that they have become partners in creating a technology that can help smartphones to produce Bluetooth “handshakes” with other smartphones in the background. This means that the contact-tracing app does not have to remain open.
Not a priority
The UK tested the centralized contact-tracing app on the Isle of Wight, which is home to 142,000 of the UK’s 66 million population, on May 7.
The UK aims to distribute it nationwide by mid-May, but there have been delays.
“We are seeking to get something going for the winter, but it isn’t the priority for us at the moment,” said Lord James Bethell, the minister for innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care.
When the pilot started happening, the UK was reportedly designing a transfer to Apple and Google’s framework and it has been testing both versions side-by-side for many weeks now.
Former Apple executive Simon Thompson is in charge of the project, while NHSX CEO Matthew Gould is not in the scene, based on a separate BBC report on Wednesday.
