The firms will take advantage of the ubiquity of their mobile operating systems to collect data on mobility and contacts between individuals that allow better monitoring and prediction of coronavirus infections.
Apple and Google on Monday showed for the first time images of what future applications that governments around the world will create for their operating systems on cell phones to track social contacts and face the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two companies, which last week opened their technology to certain software developers, published this Monday a series of images in which you can see on the screen of mobile what these applications will be like when the user opens them when they are notified that they have been in contact with someone infected or when they test positive for the coronavirus.
Apple and Google also took the opportunity to remember some of the guides that developers must follow, such as that applications will not be able to access any type of geolocation, that they must be created by organizations linked to governments and that they must ask the user for permission to send or receive notifications.
The two firms surprised in early April with an unprecedented alliance in a highly competitive environment in the technology industry by revealing that they were working together on a project to use people mobility data in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea is to take advantage of the ubiquity of Apple’s mobile operating systems with iOS and Google with Android to collect and make available to health authorities around the world data on mobility and contacts between individuals that allow better monitoring and predictions. of coronavirus infections.
It is an approach that has already been carried out in Asian countries such as China and South Korea and that raises serious questions about the privacy of user information, something that Apple and Google say they have been able to mitigate through the use of Bluetooth (a less invasive technology than, for example, geolocation) and the “voluntary” nature of the programs.
The alliance between the owners of the two most present mobile operating systems in the world should begin to materialize in mid-May when they launch an application programming interface (API) compatible with both Android and iOS.
APIs are the framework within which computer systems operate, and historically those of Android and iOS have been incompatible with each other, which made it very difficult and even prevented in some cases the correct communication between both systems.
The new API, however, will allow seamless communication between Android and iOS with the idea that the official applications created by the different health authorities can be downloaded on both iOS and Android and the information they collect can be added regardless of the computer language of each device.
Thus, if a person comes in contact with another who has tested positive or who has tested positive for coronavirus after the interaction, they will be able to receive a notification on their phone and undergo quarantine to determine if the infection has occurred.
