Tech firm Expleo has announced that it played a key role in testing Ireland's COVID-19 contact tracing app to ensure reliability
The UK and Ireland are taking different approaches to developing COVID-19 contact tracing apps, and Northern Ireland's strategy is likely to align more with Ireland's by necessity. The UK announced that it could be September before its app is complete and it may not have contact tracing features built-in, and there have been calls for Northern Ireland to develop its own app with a cross-border information sharing agreement with Ireland.
Ireland's app rolled out last week and has been downloaded over a million times, and is now being used throughout the country. The smooth rollout is due in part to Expleo's software testers, who spent 4,727 person-hours of work testing the app in various ways. The firm carried out over 3,400 individual tests before the app's launch to ensure it worked as expected and was easy to use.
Expleo stress-tested the app delivery system to ensure that it could handle the load from over a million downloads in the space of an hour, and carried out UX testing to make sure the app was fast, user-friendly, and worked reliably. The team behind the app also simulated different environments to ensure the app could work in a wide range of settings.
Contact tracing apps work by using bluetooth on your phone to detect when you are within 2m of someone for over 15 minutes. If you're diagnosed with COVID-19, the app can issue an alert that will go to all the phones you've been in close proximity to so that they can get tested. The UK app was unable to reliably detect other phones using bluetooth, but Ireland's app uses a special API developed by Apple and Google to help.
Phil Codd, Managing Director for Ireland, Expleo, said: "The COVID-19 pandemic has had – and continues to have – a devastating impact on people and communities across Ireland. We therefore felt honoured that in recognition of our experience and expertise, we were invited by the HSE to join the fight against COVID-19 by carrying out software testing on one of the world’s first contact tracing apps."
"Our team went through a rigorous, lengthy process to ensure that the app is fast, reliable and easy to use. We are delighted to see such high volumes of people downloading it and hope that this will continue so that we can all work together to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection for everyone."
Source: Written based on press release
