The UK Government has ditched attempts to develop its own coronavirus contact-tracing app.
The major U-turn saw the Department of Health and Social Care announce that efforts would instead be targeted on developing a programme which supports the NHS Test and Trace service based on Apple and Google's model.
No date has been set for the roll-out, despite Health Secretary Matt Hancock previously said the key app would be available in mid-May.
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Officials said the Government’s app, which was being trialled on the Isle of Wight, was highly inaccurate when used on iPhones, only identifying around 4% of contacts.
They said they hoped to feed their research into the Google-Apple project, suggesting that the trialled app is superior when dealing with distances between individuals.
Baroness Harding, the executive chair of NHS Test and Trace and Matthew Gould, the chief executive of the NHSX technology wing of the health service, said there had been “specific technical challenges”.
“Our response to this virus has and will continue to be as part of an international effort,” they said in a joint statement.
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“That is why as part of a collaborative approach we have agreed to share our own innovative work on estimating distance between app users with Google and Apple, work that we hope will benefit others, while using their solution to address some of the specific technical challenges identified through our rigorous testing.”
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