The NHS app: our best hope of freedom?
“Pity the politicians forced to take life-and-death decisions during the Covid-19 crisis with imperfect information and little time,” said John Thornhill in the FT. “The temptation to grasp at silver-bullet solutions” must be overwhelming. And the solution that they’re now grasping for is a contact-tracing smartphone application developed by the digital arm of the NHS. Trials of this app began on the Isle of Wight last week, and the hope is that once the technology is perfected there, it can be introduced across the nation. The app works by logging – via Bluetooth technology – all the other mobile phone owners with whom the owner comes into close contact. So if anyone using the app reports Covid-like symptoms, alerts are sent from its centralised database to everyone the app identifies as having had more than fleeting contact with that person. However, the system doesn’t require users to register their names, only the first half of their postcode.
Major problems with it have already surfaced, said Alex Hern in The Guardian. For one thing, it relies on enough people using Android phones (as opposed to iPhones). That’s because iPhones quickly go into passive mode and so the app stops looking for nearby mobiles. Unless it is constantly reopened and refreshed by its owner, it requires nearby Android phones to nudge it awake. Besides, to be properly effective, it’s thought that 60% of the population would have to use it – but as the app drains a phone’s battery, not enough people may want to install it. Another drawback, said Jamie Johnson in The Daily Telegraph, is that the app is incompatible with the contacttracing technology developed by Google and Apple that many countries – the Republic of Ireland, for one – have chosen to adopt.
To develop our own app rather than defer to Silicon Valley may look like “technological hubris”, said James Forsyth in The Spectator. But the UK is right to give it a try. In the decentralised model developed by Apple and Google, all the data remains on an individual’s handset, whereas the NHS app has a central database. And this affords the Government far more insight into the spread of the virus. Right now, local hotspots can only be identified via surges in hospital admissions, by which time most of the damage has been done. The NHS app could enable far earlier intervention. The Isle of Wight has a proud history as a “cradle of invention”, said David Jones in the Daily Mail. It’s where the first telegraph messages were transmitted and the first hovercraft built. Let’s hope it comes up trumps again, because until a vaccine comes along, this app, for all its flaws, offers our “best hope of safety, prosperity and freedom”.