Klein Hamilton News

NHSX working on COVID - 19 APP

Written By - Stephen Huxley - April 13,2020

The contact tracing app would allow government and healthcare officials to instantly track the spread of infection digitally, removing the need for time-consuming manual tracking.

“NHSX is looking at whether app-based solutions might be helpful in tracking and managing the coronavirus, and we have assembled expertise from inside and outside the organisation to do this as rapidly as possible,” said an NHSX spokesperson.

This expertise includes a team of academic researchers at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and the Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, which published a research article in Science on the viability of “epidemic control with digital contact tracing” on 31 March.

They claim by keeping a temporary record of “proximity events” between individuals, the app will use an algorithmically controlled central server to instantaneously alert recent close contacts of diagnosed cases and prompt them to self-isolate, removing a week’s worth of manual contact tracing work.

Although both Sky News and the BBC have reported the app will use Bluetooth, at least in part, for the alerts system, the Science article makes no mention of the technology.

To view the full article please visit: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480997/Coronavirus-NHSX-working-on-contact-tracing-app