Failure in fight to get tracing app on market
A BUSINESS team says it has faced a ‘David and Goliath’ battle to try and get its contact tracing app made available for community use.
Littleborough-based Biotech Brands, which normally sells a variety of health and medical products, branched out during lockdown to develop a contact tracing app.
However, despite ‘positive feedback’ from local businesses and a significant amount of investment in the project, their app, Contagion Pass, has not been granted approval for Apple devices.
Company director Chris Baldwin claims the app would have offered an efficient and safe solution to recording track and trace data and notifying those who had been in close contact with someone with the virus.
But without being available to all smartphones, it is impossible for managers to make full use of it in the workplace.
He said: “This app’s been ready for ages but it’s had untold problems - we’ve gone around to all the big corporates, they could have rolled it out to brands all across England, but we can’t come up with the goods.
“So it’s damaged us a bit as well - we put our money where our mouth is and we spent fortunes on this, and I just can’t believe this is the outcome.
“We’ve probably put £100,000 in all together, and we’ve just been sat there ready to launch but we can’t. At the end of the day, there’s such a large percentage of iPhone users - and what good is it you have 30 per cent of customers using an app and 70 per cent spreading the virus? You just can’t do it.”
Chris says he does not understand why they could not secure the approval.
He added: “We didn’t even want involvement ourselves. We would have offered it to the government at cost if they’d been interested.
“We weren’t profiteering or anything, just wanted to share a good idea. It’s got features no other app that I’ve come across has, like the dashboards that you can use to manage your teams in the workplace.
“Of course it’s not an absolute solution, but it’s a lot quicker than the system at the moment - if I were stood next to you in Tesco’s last week, and then I got coronavirus today, it would warn everyone who I walked past in Tesco straightaway.”
Declan Walker, creative marketing specialist and Chris’ partner on the project, said: “When I go on the app and set my status to positive, everyone I have been in contact with gets a notification saying to isolate.
“It’s really frustrating because we have developed it and put a lot of time and effort into it, and it’s been approved by Google - but Apple won’t.”
When contacted by the Observer, Apple sent us app guidelines for ensuring the ‘credibility’ of health and safety information.
They detail that: “Communities around the world are depending on apps to be credible news sources - helping users understand the latest health innovations find out where they can get help if needed or provide assistance to their neighbours. To help fulfill these expectations we’re evaluating apps critically to ensure data sources are reputable and that developers presenting these apps are from recognised entities such as government organisations, healthfocused NGOs, companies deeply credentialed in health issues and medical or educational institutions. Only developers from one of these recognised entities should submit an app related to Covid-19.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said their Test and Trace service had reached more than 250,000 people between its launch and mid-August. They said the NHS Test and Trace service results were ‘in line’ with the recognised metric of success for contact tracing services across the world.