Three Seattle software engineers who set out to build a COVID-19 tracing app back in March are finally seeing the results of their hard work as the state of Nevada on Monday released COVID Trace.
Nevada’s Department of Health and Human Services launched the app for iOS and Android after customizing an open-source version of the app and working with Apple and Google and the team in Seattle.
COVID Trace was originally developed by Dudley Carr, Wes Carr and Josh Gummersall, three tech veterans with experience at Moz, Google, Uber, and elsewhere. The Carr brothers both do consulting work and Gummersall recently took a new job at Microsoft.
In the early days of the pandemic in the United States, the team set out to work on its digital tracing solution, but ran into a roadblock with Apple. The tech giant limited COVID-19 apps primarily to federal and state agencies or established health organizations.
Apple and Google have since teamed up on an Exposure Notifications System to help public health authorities develop apps to trace the virus while preserving the privacy of those who download the technology.
“The process of getting this app out there and trying to partner with health departments was a real challenge in the beginning,” Dudley Carr told GeekWire ahead of the launch of Nevada’s app. “What we found, for example, in Washington state, it was just really unclear who would even make the decision to evaluate these types of solutions.”
Virginia was the first state to roll out an app using the Apple-Google tech. Vox reported that adoption of the apps is tough for a couple reasons: users may not want to give up any type of their private health information and the federal government’s failure to create a national app has left the decision and execution up to the states.
Carr’s app ended up two states away because of interest shown by Andrew Pascal, an entrepreneur who runs a gaming company called Playstudios. He reached out to Carr after reading about COVID Trace in GeekWire in April while looking for a solution to help his state. Pascal, who has covered some of the development costs, connected the team with Jim Murren, chair of the Nevada COVID-19 Response, Relief and Recovery Task Force.
“Our resort industry has always been open to addressing complex challenges with innovative solutions,” Murren said in a news release Monday. “The adoption of COVID Trace is no different, and I’m proud of the way our business community has stepped up to participate in this important effort. The broad adoption of COVID Trace would be a game changer for Nevada, in terms of both public health and economic stability.”
To use the free, Bluetooth-based app, users must opt-in to the Exposure Notifications System. That system will generate a random ID for each user’s device. To help ensure those IDs can’t be used to identify a person or location, they change every 10-20 minutes. The user’s phone and surrounding phones will work in the background to exchange these random IDs via Bluetooth, a passive process which begins once the user opts-in, and functions without the app open.
The user’s phone periodically checks all the random IDs associated with positive COVID-19 cases against its own list. If there is a match, the app will notify the user with further instructions from DHHS on what to do next to stay safe and keep others safe.
“It’s pretty much like all of the other exposure notification apps,” Carr said. “It is incredibly straightforward. It doesn’t do any symptom checking. Its sole focus is to get someone onboarded with exposure notification and point them at resources if necessary. They can put it in their pocket and never worry about it again until they get an exposure.”
Nevada employers have agreed to encourage their employees to use COVID Trace and the state’s resort industry has embraced the tool as a way to keep employees and guests safe.
“Andrew and Jim realized that it is critical that the rollout has to be an incredibly successful one,” Carr said. “So they contacted all of the resorts and unions and other organizations to participate and endorse and get behind it. So I think Nevada is actually in a really unique position to make sure that the launch goes successfully.”
Carr said he and his team are not currently working on customizing the app for any other states. It’s been a time-consuming process, especially over the past few weeks.
“It is certainly far more work than we thought,” Carr said. “I do kid with my brother. It’s like, ‘I’m not sure we would have done this had we known how much work it would have been.'”
