Why the NHS Covid-19 contact tracing app failed

Illustration by Wired

Test, track and trace – just not with the NHS app

Matt Hancock has had another app catastrophe. England’s planned contact tracing app, which has been trialled on the Isle of Wight and downloaded by tens of thousands of people, has been ditched in favour of a system developed by Google and Apple.

The reversal, first reported by the BBC and later confirmed by the government, follows months of delays for the home-brewed app and difficulties surrounding its implementation. It also makes England the latest in a string of countries to ditch a centralised system in favour of a decentralised one supported by two Silicon Valley giants….

Read Matt Burgess of Wired magazine’s investigation into the British government’s latest tech misstep here.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nhs-tracing-app-scrapped-apple-google-uk