Apple on Friday announced that it will partner with Google on a contact tracing technology that can be used to slow and contain the spread of diseases.
Contact tracing is the process of trying to identify people who may have come into contact with an infected person. By tracing these contacts, testing them for infections, and then tracing their contacts, it can help track and reduce the spread of a disease.
Per Apple’s document:
Contact Tracing makes it possible to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus by alerting participants of possible exposure to someone who they have recently been in contact with, and who has subsequently been positively diagnosed as having the virus.
The two companies will create a Bluetooth platform with APIs and “operating system-level technology.” The project will be released as a software update in May. Users who may be worried about personal privacy and being tracked can choose whether or not to opt-in for the effort.
Apple has also released technical documentation focusing on the framework API, cryptography specification, and Bluetooth specification, as linked below.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.