Contact Tracing: Computer Software

(asked on 24th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish a list of covid-19 symptom tracker online apps that have been approved by his Department; and what guidance his Department has published on downloading Government approved apps.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 30th April 2020

The National Health Service has an existing approach to assessing apps for their clinical efficacy, data security and cyber security using the Digital Assessment Questionnaire which is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-apps-library/guidance-for-health-app-developers-commissioners-and-assessors/how-we-assess-health-apps-and-digital-tools#preview-the-questions

Apps can also be assessed against the NHS Digital Health Technology Standard that was introduced in February 2020. This is available at the following link:

https://www.nhsx.nhs.uk/media/documents/NHS_Digital_Health_Technology_Standard_draft.pdf

To date, three COVID-19 symptom tracker apps have been assessed using these approaches. More information is available about how we assess apps and other digital health technologies at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2020/how-we-are-assessing-covid-19-apps

NHSX, together with jHub, are working with the providers of third party COVID-19 symptom tracking apps and will publish details of those that meet our standards on the NHSX website in due course.

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