Building the gold-standard COVID-19 contact tracing app in just 3 months

This pandemic was the first during the “digital age,” raising new opportunities to manage the outbreak through technology and new tools. 

The use of existing Bluetooth technology in smartphones to support contact tracing — considered one of the most important activities for controlling the spread of coronavirus — emerged as a potentially life-saving option. The HSE quickly identified the urgency of the situation and determined it needed a tech-first approach to tracking and managing the outbreak in Ireland. To do so, it sought a partner to develop a contact tracing app for Ireland, one that would be reliable, secure and easy for the public to use. And it needed to be built in a matter of weeks.

“I remember the sun was shining the afternoon of Sunday, 22 March 2020, when I received a call from the Health Service Executive Ireland (HSE). Having heard about our rapid and high-quality app development, the HSE contacted us wanting to build a contact tracing app for Ireland.” Cian O’Maidin, Co-Founder and President of Nearform

Most people remember where they were when the world started “shutting down” in March of 2020. While most companies were retreating, the Nearform team came together the same afternoon that Cian got the call. We set up a virtual command centre and kicked off a fully remote, design-led workshop with the HSE and Irish Department of Health to outline the requirements, scope and functionality of the app. 

"Nearform have proved themselves to be a reliable and responsive company working with the HSE team to deliver the Covid Tracker app. It was essential for such an important national project to have a partner that took privacy, security and performance so seriously. The timeframe was ambitious for a project of this scale and Nearform responded exceptionally well to the challenge." Fran Thompson, Chief Information Officer – Health Service Executive

A broad, collaborative team including Nearform, the HSE, the Department of Health, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO), An Garda Síochána and more quickly identified the user needs and data concerns for the app, and got to work. 

The team pushed hard into the night. The next  morning, Nearform presented a prototype with a full user journey and onboarding sequence. We now had the basis of a working app that could be scrutinised and tested.

The app needed to be built quickly, but, more importantly, it had to be built right. Protecting the privacy and anonymity of users was paramount, and the reliability of close contact data was the focus. The app had to benefit the Irish contact tracing team and provide support to the overall effort to protect Ireland’s residents.

The initial solution worked on the centralised data model, in which app data was stored in a central database. However, the team met technical and privacy-related obstacles that could not be resolved. For example, the Bluetooth proximity detection feature on certain smartphones would not work if the phones were locked while in a pocket or handbag. And the prospect of collecting and storing user data, even if it was anonymised, raised too many privacy concerns.

The Nearform team reached out to Apple and Google to try to find a way around the technical issues. We learned the two companies were coming together to create a solution that would address not just the tech, but the privacy problems as well. The joint Apple-Google application programming interface (API) would allow governments and health authorities to build apps according to a decentralised data model and specifically enable Bluetooth proximity detection on locked phones as long as users had Bluetooth turned on.

The team decided to switch models and secured beta access to the new technology from Apple and Google. We rapidly redesigned the user onboarding flow and created a new working prototype. Within three months of that first phone call from the HSE, the team had a secure, tested, user-friendly, reliable contact tracing app that worked and was ready to be deployed on a national scale.

The COVID Tracker Ireland app is the most successfully deployed contact tracing app built on the decentralised model using the joint Apple-Google technology. In addition to enabling Bluetooth contact tracing on Apple and Android devices, the app included a symptom checker that let users record how they’re feeling each day and a national overview of how the virus was spread across Ireland. 

User setup consisted of only four steps, and the app did not request access to any of the user’s phone data. All contact data was stored in the app on the user’s phone and was deleted after 14 days. Close contacts were recorded only when two phones running the app were within close proximity of each other for a minimum duration of time — this was two metres for at least 15 minutes at the time of release, but could be changed according to health authority guidelines.

Designed for ease of use by all demographics, the user interface was simple and clean, with minimal navigation and plain language. While people were encouraged to use the daily symptom checker, the app was built so that users could set it up and forget about it. If a user tested positive for COVID-19, they were asked to share their app data with the national contact tracing team and given a one-time use code to upload that data via encrypted transfer.

The app’s code was open sourced and is available on GitHub, along with a series of app design and development reports and documentation. Additional information on privacy and research, including a Data Protection Impact Assessment and Data Protection Information Notice are available on the COVID Tracker app page of the HSE website.

The process of developing the COVID Tracker app tells a remarkable story of what’s possible when talented, determined people come together to create something valuable and important. 

Mobile development

UX design

Accessibility