The UK's government-funded National Health Service (NHS) is looking into the feasibility of deploying a mobile phone application that could be used as a contact-tracing tool, which alerts users to their exposure to coronavirus carriers.
The app is being developed by NHSX, the health service's digital wing, alongside academics and industry partners as one of the means to help ease the current strict lockdown measures in place in the country to help control the spread of COVID-19.
"Our analysis suggests that almost half of coronavirus transmissions occur in the very early phase of infection, before symptoms appear, so we need a fast and effective mobile app for alerting people who have been exposed," said Professor Christophe Fraser from Oxford University's Big Data Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, among the researchers behind the project.
"The instant mobile app concept is very simple. If you are diagnosed with coronavirus, the people you''ve recently come into contact with will be messaged advising them to isolate. If this mobile app is developed and deployed rapidly, and enough people opt-in to use such an approach, we can slow the spread of coronavirus and mitigate against devastating human, economic and social impacts," he said.
The Oxford University team has provided UK and European governments with evidence to support the feasibility of developing a contact tracing mobile app that is instant, could be widely deployed, and should be implemented with appropriate ethical considerations.
It recommends that the mobile application should form part of an integrated coronavirus control strategy that identifies infected people and their recent person-to-person contacts using digital technology.
"Our findings confirm that not everybody has to use the mobile app for it to work. If with the help of the app the majority of individuals self-isolate on showing symptoms, and the majority of their contacts can be traced, we stand a chance of stopping the epidemic," explains Dr David Bonsall, researcher at the Nuffield Department of Medicine and clinician at Oxford''s John Radcliffe Hospital.
"If we can securely deploy this technology, the more people that opt-in, the faster the epidemic will stop, and the more lives can be saved," he said.
The proposed app would record people''s GPS location data as they move about their daily lives.
This would be supplemented by users scanning quick response or QR codes posted to public amenities in places where a GPS signal is inadequate, as well as Bluetooth signals.
If a person starts feeling ill, it is suggested they use the app to request a home test. And if it comes back positive for COVID-19, then an instant signal would be sent to everyone they had been in close contact with over recent days.
Those people would be advised to self-isolate for a fortnight, but would not be told who had triggered the warning.
"NHSX is looking at whether app-based solutions might be helpful in tracking and managing coronavirus, and we have assembled expertise from inside and outside the organisation to do this as rapidly as possible," said NHSX CEO Matthew Gould.
Experts believe the mobile app could be combined with social distancing measures to reduce close contacts as part of a variety of measures required to control the coronavirus pandemic.
"To effectively tackle this pandemic we need to harness 21st century technology. Our research makes the case for a mobile application that accelerates our ability to trace infected people and provides vital information that keeps communities safe from this pandemic," noted Fraser.