“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,” the companies said in a joint statement.
Their system uses Bluetooth, a standard way for most mobile devices to communicate with each other. Apple and Google shared a theoretical example to explain how it works.
Two people meet to chat for a few minutes, and in the background via Bluetooth their smartphones exchange anonymous identifiers to register that they have been in contact. These digital keys change every 15 minutes or so and remain on these people’s devices to preserve privacy.
Several days later, one of these individuals is diagnosed with Covid-19. The person enters the results into a health-agency app on their phone. The system then asks for this user’s consent. If granted, the person’s smartphone sends a record of the other mobile devices that have been in close proximity during the previous days. This information is temporarily stored in a remote computer server for about 14 days.
Meanwhile, the other person’s phone checks the server periodically to see if any identifier keys have been associated with a positive Covid-19 diagnosis. The phone downloads all positive keys and matches it anonymously to the key belonging to the individual from the original meeting days earlier. This sends a notification to the other person’s phone with information from health agencies about how to quarantine or self-isolate.
The contact-tracing technology isn’t the first step against Covid-19 for either company. Google launched an information website in March, while Apple has released its own screening tools for iPhone users. Apple has also donated over 20 million masks to health-care workers and has designed face shields, and Verily, a unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., is running virus-testing sites in some parts of California.
Other organizations are also working on contact-tracing. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earlier this week announced plans for a similar system. Some countries and third-party developers have also tried implementing contact-tracing on phones, but they have faced privacy and connectivity issues that the new system is designed to avoid.
--With assistance from Billy House.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.