NHS Covid-19 Test & Trace App
The NHS Covid-19 app has prevented 600,000 cases of infection in England and Wales. A global team of 70 Zühlke employees built both the iOS and Android app, the highly scalable back-end services, and the underlying AWS cloud platform infrastructure. The team also helped scientists develop a new, more accurate algorithm to detect exposure to infection.
Zühlke's decades of experience in fast, agile development enabled our team to take the NHS Covid-19 app from conception to launch-readiness in just twelve weeks. Since then, the app has continued to evolve as we keep developing and operating it.
The purpose of our work on the app is to break the chain of transmission of the Covid-19 virus, stop the spread and protect users and their communities. Since its launch in September 2020, the app has been downloaded over 24 million times, representing 60% of the eligible population. It was one of the first apps built on the Google/Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN) framework, and the first to take advantage of the significant improvements seen in the latest versions of these APIs. The GAEN framework is designed to protect users from the spread of the virus while maintaining their privacy and anonymity.