Apple and Google together building a contact tracing app to track COVID-19 patients. The UK has decided not to use the framework proposed by tech giants for its NHS (National Health Service).
NHSX is creating a centralized app for health that has been flagged for its privacy and security issues. Apple and Google has said that the contact tracing app is a decentralized one. The tracking information will not be stored in a central server.
NHSX in its blog has said” it has prioritized security and privacy in all stages of the app’s development, starting with the initial design, and user testing. We have drawn on expertise from across government and industry to review our design and help test the app. We are working with Apple and Google on their welcome support for tracing apps around the world”.
Both the companies have said that the contact tracing app is completely safe and once the pandemic is over the companies have promised to vanish this app.
Also, NHS is facing a lot of questions in Britain like why they need to have its own framework for the COVID-19 tracing app. NHS app is likely to roll out within two to three weeks.
How Apple and Google’s contact tracing app works?
The idea is to help governments and health authorities to find the victims travel history easily. Apple and Google shared a theoretical example to explain how it works. Let us consider if two people meet and chat for a few minutes. In the background via Bluetooth their smartphones exchange anonymous identifiers to register that they have been in contact. These digital keys change every 15 minutes or so and remain on these people’s devices to preserve privacy.
If a person diagnosed with COVID-19, he enters the results into a health-agency app on their phone. The system then asks for this user’s consent. If granted, the person’s smartphone sends a record of the other mobile devices that have been in close contact during the previous days. Meanwhile, the other person’s phone checks the server periodically. To see if any identifier keys have been associated with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. The phone downloads all positive keys and matches it anonymously to the key belonging to the individual from the original meeting days earlier. This sends a notification to the other person’s phone with information from health agencies about how to quarantine or self-isolate.