They hope to initially help third-party contact-tracing apps run efficiently.

But ultimately, they aim to do away with the need to download dedicated apps, to encourage the practice.

The two companies believe their approach – designed to keep users, whose participation would be voluntary, anonymous – addresses privacy concerns.

Their contact-tracing method would work by using a smartphone’s Bluetooth signals to determine to whom the owner had recently been in proximity for long enough to have established contagion a risk.

If one of those people later tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, a warning would be sent to the original handset owner.

No GPS location data or personal information would be recorded.

“Privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance in this effort and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders,” Apple and Google said in a joint statement.

“We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyse.”

President Trump said his administration needed time to consider the development.

“It’s very interesting, but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom,” he said during a White House press conference.

“We’re going to take… a very strong look at it, and we’ll let you know pretty soon.”

The European Union’s Data Protection Supervisor sounded more positive, saying: “The initiative will require further assessment, however, after a quick look it seems to tick the right boxes as regards user choice, data protection by design and pan-European interoperability.”

But others have noted that the success of the venture may depend on getting enough people tested.

SOURCE: BBC

This pandemic has triggered an unprecedented demand for digital health technology solutions and has revealed successful solutions such as for population screening, tracking the infection, prioritizing the use and allocation of resources, and designing targeted responses.

“We need your commitment, so we can turn those ideas into reality and work with public health agencies and frontline health workers to put this pandemic to rest,” said WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in his welcoming remark. “We can only tackle this global threat – and get our economy back on track – by working together.”

The meeting was co-facilitated by Steve Davis and Precious Malebona Matsoso, co-chairs of WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Group.

The goals of the meeting were as follows:

1. Introduce WHO’s Digital Health & Innovation efforts for COVID-19 and seek support from interested technology companies in the design and execution of those initiatives.
2. Build on WHO’s COVID-19 efforts through new collaboration and knowledge sharing, to deliver targeted solutions through a coordinated effort to support countries facing stages of this epidemic in different ways and different times.
3. Share and explore known gaps and areas that lack focus. Topics include user-focused solutions, combating misinformation, supply chain management, applications supporting health workers, community engagement platforms, support knowledge management capacities, research and development support, recovery planning work.
4. Secure volunteer and pro-bono resources from global tech companies to design and execute response initiatives with WHO.

Bernardo Mariano Junior, director of WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation, called for unity in response efforts, “The world needs to be well prepared and united in the spirit of shared responsibility, to digitally detect, protect, respond, and prepare the recovery for COVID 19. No single entity or single country initiative will be sufficient. We need everyone.”

SOURCE: WHO

It blogged the firms would create computer dashboard screens to show the spread of the virus and the healthcare system’s ability to deal with it.

These will draw on data gathered via 111 calls and Covid-19 test results.

The first should be made available to government decision-makers next week.

Four tech firms were named in the blog. Three are US-based: Microsoft, Google and Palantir. The fourth is Faculty AI, which is headquartered in London.

Amazon was not referenced but the BBC has confirmed that it is also involved. The NHS intends to add details of the company’s role later.

Many of the details of the scheme were first reported by the BBC on Thursday.

Vulnerable groups

The blog confirmed that NHSX – a unit responsible for digital innovation – was heading the effort to harness a range of data sources, so that they could be used in combination.

The aim is to create dashboards that draw on the information as soon as it becomes available in order to help the government and health chiefs to:

• Understand how the virus is spreading and identify risks to particularly vulnerable groups of people
• Proactively increase resources in emerging hot spots
• Ensure critical equipment is supplied to hospitals and other facilities in greatest need
• Divert patients to the facilities best able to care for them based on demand, resources and staffing capacity

It added that the information would “largely” be drawn from existing data sources, and would be anonymised so that individual patients could not be identified. It said this would involve removing names, addresses and other identifiers, and replacing them with a “pseudonym”.

In time, it said, the aim was to provide a separate dashboard that could be viewed by the public.

Regarding the tech firms, it said:

• Microsoft had built a data store on its Azure cloud computing platform to hold the information in a single, secure location
• Palantir was providing use of its Foundry software tool, which analyses records to deliver a “single source of truth”
• Faculty AI was developing the dashboards, models and simulations that decision-makers would be presented with
• Google’s G Suite of productivity apps might be used to collect and aggregate real-time operational data such as occupancy levels and A&E capacity

“Microsoft remains steadfastly committed to supporting the NHS every way it can at this critical time,” Cindy Rose, the firm’s UK chief executive said.

Although not mentioned, Amazon’s AWS division will also provide additional cloud computing facilities.

Source: BBC