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Next month, both companies will release APIs that enhance interoperability between Android and iOS devices by leveraging apps from public health authorities. Users will be able to easily download the apps from their respective app stores.
Apple and Google will also enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact-placing platform, which is more advanced than an API. This will allow a broader range of individuals to participate if they so choose.
Google stressed that user privacy, transparency, and consent are vital in this effort, and the company will continue to build this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders.
“We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyze,” Apple said in the announcement. “All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems. Through close cooperation and collaboration with developers, governments and public health providers, we hope to harness the power of technology to help countries around the world slow the spread of COVID-19 and accelerate the return of everyday life.
Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also recently announced that they developed a system that could help improve COVID-19 contact tracing using Bluetooth technology. The MIT system augments manual contact tracing by public health officials by leveraging short-range Bluetooth signals from individual’s smartphones.
If an individual tests positive for COVID-19, they can upload “chirps” their phone has sent out in the recent 14 days to a database. Other people can scan the database and see if any of the chirps match and then a notification will inform the individual if they have been exposed to the virus.
The system will inform public health authorities on the next steps to take. Throughout the process, patient’s information is kept private.
“I keep track of what I’ve broadcasted, and you keep track of what you’ve heard, and this will allow us to tell if someone was in close proximity to an infected person,” Ron Rivest, MIT professor and principal investigator of the project, said in the announcement. “We’re using cryptographic techniques to generate random, rotating numbers that are not just anonymous, but pseudonymous, constantly changing their ‘ID,’ and that can’t be traced back to an individual.”
The contact tracing approach will include the privacy-first effort that MIT launched in response to COVID-19. Safepaths is a broad set of mobile apps under development in the MIT Media Lab. The new Bluetooth-based system has benefited from SafePath’s previous work.
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