Researchers at the University of Washington and several volunteers from Microsoft have teamed up to develop a new contact tracing app that promises to alert people about potential exposure to the novel coronavirus without jeopardizing their privacy. An Android demo version of the app is available on the project’s website and an Apple iOS version will be released in the coming days.
Like the recently announced app developed by Apple and Google, CovidSafe uses Bluetooth signals to broadcast randomly generated code names that remain private and change every 15 minutes. If a user tests positive for COVID-19 and chooses to share that information with the app, it will alert anyone else with the app who has come into contact with them over the last 14 days without divulging names or locations. After those notifications are sent, the data is deleted.
“Contact tracing is one of the most effective tools that public health officials have to halt a pandemic and prevent future outbreaks,” Justin Chan, a doctoral student at UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, said in a statement. “Our contact-tracing app addresses underlying privacy, security and re-identification issues, rather than sweeping them under the rug.”
While contact tracing apps are important, they are not without flaws. In addition to serious privacy concerns, they do not offer an end-all solution. Unless the government mandates everyone use an app like CovidSafe (which comes with its own legal issues), the information is collected on a completely voluntary basis. In fact, John Langford, a researcher at Microsoft Research New York, says that, even if 10 percent of the population uses a contact tracing app, just 1 percent of contacts would be discovered this way if you consider both parties need to be using the tool fully.
With this in mind, UW says CovidSafe was designed to “augment — not replace — conventional contact tracing.” This means health officials can use the app as they interview patients who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus about where they have been and who they have come into contact with. The app creates a log of a user’s location over time, so it can help these patients better remember details about where they have been lately.
The app also includes a symptom tracker to help patients monitor their illness and a messaging feature that will allow users to receive tailored announcements from public-health organizations. The developers have also made the code behind the app publicly available for other organizations to use.
Ultimately, the goal of CovidSafe is to provide people with a solution that prioritizes their health and respects their civil liberties.
“Ten years from now, I want to be able to look back and genuinely say, ‘I did something to help in the greatest crisis of my lifetime,’” John Langford, a Microsoft Research computer scientist who contributed to the project, said in a statement. “At this point, dozens of people have contributed hundreds of hours toward making this project happen. We have all the expertise needed to create something genuinely useful, and we are well on the way.”
