UK's NHS working on app using Apple-Google contact tracking tech
The UK's National Health Service is working with Google and Apple to develop an app to assist with the tracking of COVID-19, a system that may be the contact tracing software the two tech giants recently announced was in development.
On Friday, Apple and Google announced they were jointly working on APIs to allow iOS and Android devices to detect each other using Bluetooth, for the purposes of tracking the spread of COVID-19. As part of the announcement, it was claimed the APIs would be made available for use by public health authorities to use in their official apps, with the UK's NHS seemingly among the first to take them up on the offer.
Sources of The Sunday Times advise the technology branch of the NHS, NHSX, is working on the development of the app with Google and Apple. The app's creation was apparently ordered by government ministers, keen to use technology to minimize the spread and impact of the coronavirus on the country's citizens.
In a daily pandemic update, health secretary Matt Hancock confirmed the app was in development. According to the BBC, a pre-release version of the software will be tested at a secure location in the North of England over the next week.
The app would work in practically the same way as the proposed Apple-Google system, in that Bluetooth would be used to log other devices the smartphone and its user comes into contact with in their daily life. Using a system of exchanging anonymous identifier beacons stored on smartphones, which can be sent to a central database, it aims to allow devices to log if it has been near to someone who recently has been positively diagnosed with COVID-19.
While NHSX reportedly wasn't aware of the Apple-Google project beforehand, it intends to add the API to the app.
If a user is self-diagnosed as having the coronavirus, they can declare the status in the app. A yellow alert is then able to be sent to any users who were recently closeby for an extended period of time.
Following a positive medical test for the virus, a red alert warning will be sent instead, telling others to go into quarantine. To prevent misuse, the user would have to enter a verification code into the app, one that would be received alongside their test result.
Hancock advised the app would be voluntary, but experts warn around 60 percent of the UK population would have to use the technology for it to become an effective tool.
The app's data will be handled "according to the highest ethical and security standards," said Hancock, "and would only be used for NHS care and research. And we wouldn't hold it any longer than is needed."
Update: Government's confirmation of the app's development added to the story.
On Friday, Apple and Google announced they were jointly working on APIs to allow iOS and Android devices to detect each other using Bluetooth, for the purposes of tracking the spread of COVID-19. As part of the announcement, it was claimed the APIs would be made available for use by public health authorities to use in their official apps, with the UK's NHS seemingly among the first to take them up on the offer.
Sources of The Sunday Times advise the technology branch of the NHS, NHSX, is working on the development of the app with Google and Apple. The app's creation was apparently ordered by government ministers, keen to use technology to minimize the spread and impact of the coronavirus on the country's citizens.
In a daily pandemic update, health secretary Matt Hancock confirmed the app was in development. According to the BBC, a pre-release version of the software will be tested at a secure location in the North of England over the next week.
The app would work in practically the same way as the proposed Apple-Google system, in that Bluetooth would be used to log other devices the smartphone and its user comes into contact with in their daily life. Using a system of exchanging anonymous identifier beacons stored on smartphones, which can be sent to a central database, it aims to allow devices to log if it has been near to someone who recently has been positively diagnosed with COVID-19.
While NHSX reportedly wasn't aware of the Apple-Google project beforehand, it intends to add the API to the app.
If a user is self-diagnosed as having the coronavirus, they can declare the status in the app. A yellow alert is then able to be sent to any users who were recently closeby for an extended period of time.
Following a positive medical test for the virus, a red alert warning will be sent instead, telling others to go into quarantine. To prevent misuse, the user would have to enter a verification code into the app, one that would be received alongside their test result.
Hancock advised the app would be voluntary, but experts warn around 60 percent of the UK population would have to use the technology for it to become an effective tool.
The app's data will be handled "according to the highest ethical and security standards," said Hancock, "and would only be used for NHS care and research. And we wouldn't hold it any longer than is needed."
Update: Government's confirmation of the app's development added to the story.
Comments
This is what I was most worried about.
Oh, and the same goes for the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Prime Minister.
I live in southwestern Illinois across the river from St. Louis, Mo. Our local newspaper (a McClatchy owned rag) recently published an article declaring that Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has ‘Supreme Authority’ to deal with this crisis. Supreme authority! Now there’s a statement to chew on.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/police-under-fire-for-telling-dad-front-garden/
https://www.yahoo.com/now/coronavirus-police-trolley-threat-backtrack-090520020.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/10/police-fire-new-checks-non-essential-shopping-despite-home-secretarys/
Here is an article where the government have made it clear that people can buy whatever they want in shops that are open, and be in their own gardens:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52245937
Here is an article that discusses the garden incident, and states that the officer who told people they couldn't be in their own garden was misinformed and has been spoken to about it:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/coronavirus-police-apologise-for-telling-family-they-werent-allowed-in-their-own-front-garden/ar-BB12qPik
The biggest problem here is that, as proposed, people could state they have coronavirus symptoms with no checks, issuing an "orange alert" to anyone they've been in contact with. Too open to the whims of mindless dickheads who would think it terribly funny to issue a false alert. I don't see an immediate solution to this problem, beyond just not allowing it and using it for clinically-confirmed cases only. As such, this is only likely to be useful if we can hit our stated 100,000 COVID-19 tests a day.
I can't see the whole article as it's behind a paywall, but the bit that I can see does suggest that this is a load of over-sensationalised tosh of which the Telegraph should be ashamed. Yes, the Police should be held to account, but not by misrepresenting what they are doing. The article appears to be based around a tweet issued from a particular force, but that tweet starts "Essential journey?" (my emphasis added).
The point is that the law states that people should only be making an essential journey. So, travel to the shop to buy food. And if when you're there, you want to buy a lottery scratch card, go ahead. But travel to the shop simply to buy a scratch card? Nope - that's not an essential journey and you shouldn't be doing it.
Our home secretary has warned the police not to overstep the law, saying "the suggestion was “not appropriate” and did not follow guidance issued to police."
The misrepresentation is your loose use of language. The way you phrase it "police have been", "the police", implies that this is occurring at an institutional level, deliberately. This is demonstrably not the case. The cases highlighted in the media are anecdotal cases of individual officers getting it wrong.
Is the media doing an important job by identifying and highlighting these missteps? Yes. But many articles are pitched in a deliberately click-baiting, hyperbolic manner, which is especially disappointing when it's done by supposedly respectable broadsheet publications. It's wrong to imply that these anecdotal cases are indications of a wider systemic issue. In any organisation that contains many thousands of individuals, it is literally impossible to ensure that every single one of them will always do what they are supposed to, because they are human and humans make mistakes.
What is vital is that the system is at least reasonably good at identifying when problems occur and correcting them if necessary and possible. So like I said, media reporting misdeeds is important, but let's not do it in a way that misrepresents the overall picture and gets people unnecessarily riled.
Ah so the chief of police for Northamptonshire saying they will search baskets isn't at an institutional level? I agree it is important that the media keeps the police in check, but the police should be able to judge what is reasonable and what isn't without testing the waters to see what they can get away with - especially when government guidance is pretty clear. This kind of thing hugely reduces the trust in police, and it has been found that the more contact with police people have, the less trust they have in them.
OK. I agree that that was bad. But in this case the system has worked, no? Some individual made a mistake, the media noted the mistake, the individual's superior told him he was wrong.
In this particular case, one does have to question why someone in such a senior position is getting something that, really, isn't that hard to understand, so fundamentally wrong. Personally I would question why this individual is in such a senior position if he lacks basic reading comprehension skills, or thinks that he's too important to read advice, or thinks it's OK to make up his own rules.
So, I think we agree about this.
But let's rewind to your very first post, shall we? Did that not give the impression that the police in the UK are running wild at an institutional level, right across the country? I think that it did. And from where I am, I do not feel that that is what is happening.
Hmmm, having investigated a bit more, perhaps it genuinely was just "clumsy language". Let's hear from the man himself: https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/northamptonshire-police-chief-puts-record-straight-checking-shopping-trolleys-2536309