In a rare event of rivals coming together, Apple and Google have announced that they are jointly developing a COVID-19 contact tracing tool using Bluetooth. Bluetooth is common to iOS and Android. The CEOs of the two technology giants, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai have put out tweets confirming the development.
There are some gaps to be filled on how precisely this is going to work. The broad outline of the programme to be developed will be as below.
When a person X meets with another person Y, the Bluetooth on their respective phones will identify each other. Here’s where the first step needs to be taken by Google and Apple since iOS and Android otherwise don’t recognize each other. The companies are now asking their respective developer community to come up with the application programming interface or API for this purpose.
Now, if X or Y tests positive for COVID-19 at a later date, immediately a message will be triggered on the other device that a person met by her/him has been tested positive for the virus. This person will therefore be alerted to take the necessary precaution, including getting tested and /or go into a self-quarantine.
The major issue here is to keep this whole process going without compromising on the individual’s privacy. Here, for example, between X and Y, of Y were to contract the disease, X will receive a message but will not know the identity of X.
The next important challenge for the companies is to have this COVID-19 contact tracing tool integrated with the state-operated health app. There is the Arogya Setu app in the Indian context for instance.
There are other issues involved as well. First specific permissions will have to be obtained from the individuals on the tracing aspect without tracking their location etc. The other worry bring expressed by experts is Apple updates all its devices to the latest iOS version. Android on the other hand has a different way of working. It is left to individual device makers. So, you will have smartphones on Android 10, 9 and 8 may be all in use. How will this new tool work across all these versions?
It may be a sound beginning in the right direction and the companies say it may be by May 2020 when the first announcement on this will come.