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Apple & Google Provide Sample Code & Concepts For COVID-19 Spread Tracker

After releasing a new iOS 13.5 beta last week, Apple has today provided new information about its COVID-19 Exposure Notification API. The company continues to underline this API’s privacy-first design, and is releasing new resources to developers of public health authorities. 

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Apple and Google say the new resources are designed to help developers in the public health authority build their applications for notification of exposure. This includes onboarding design concepts in API applications for exposure notification, as well as concepts of positive test results consent interfaces and exposure notifications themselves.

Apple and Google are also releasing sample app code, in addition to the design concepts, which can be used to develop contact tracing applications. The sample code is intended to show developers the best practices for building their own applications for notification of exposure.

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Public health authority developers can see in the screenshots how best to welcome users into their applications for exposure notifications. This includes context on the application’s purpose and the process of allowing users to manually opt-in to log and notify on exposure. 

From there the screenshots show a positive result of COVID-19 in the process of having a user report. These screenshots show developers of public health authority walking users through the reporting process that they have tested positive for coronavirus including a unique test identifier. The screens could explain why somebody may want to share their final result.

The third set of screenshots shows sending the actual notification of exposure to someone who was interacting with someone else who tested positive. This might include a breakdown of exposures over the past 14 days, and even details of the exposure length. 

The last Screenshots show how users can manage exposure notifications in their system settings. In the iOS 13.5 beta last week, the Settings app contains a new toggle that manages COVID-19 exposure notifications. Apple representatives underline that in addition to this toggle, users will have to explicitly choose to enable the feature in the application to the public health authority. The system is fully opt-in.