The United Kingdom’s plans to launch a smartphone application to track potential COVID-19 infections won’t include Apple and Google. The country’s National Health Service has designed its own mobile software to do contact tracing of people exposed to the coronavirus. The NHS reportedly found that its own tech, which runs in the background on Apple’s iPhone, works “sufficiently well.” One hangup with some contact tracing apps is that they work only when a phone is active and the app is running in the foreground, which can sap battery life.
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UK Rejects Apple-Google Contact Tracing Approach
Posted by: John P. Mello Jr. April 29, 2020 04:00 AMThe United Kingdom’s plans to launch a smartphone application to track potential COVID-19 infections won’t include Apple and Google. The country’s National Health Service has designed its own mobile software to do contact tracing of people exposed to the coronavirus. The NHS reportedly found that its own tech, which runs in the background on Apple’s iPhone, works “sufficiently well.” One hangup with some contact tracing apps is that they work only when a phone is active and the app is running in the foreground, which can sap battery life.