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* Platform aims to trace those at risk across borders
* Asian mobile tracing helped but would violate EU rules
* Tech platform expected to be released on April 7
* I would use it if it's voluntary - German leader
(Adds comments by Merkel, SPD co-leader)
By Douglas Busvine
BERLIN, April 1 (Reuters) - A group of European experts said
on Wednesday they would soon launch technology for smartphones
to help trace people who had come into contact with those
infected with coronavirus, helping the health authorities act
swiftly to halt its spread.
The initiative proposes keeping a record of when a
smartphone comes in close range with another, so that should an
individual test positive for the virus, others at risk of
infection can be quickly identified.
The ability to track down those at risk of infection more
accurately could make it possible to ease country-wide lockdowns
that have brought economic activity in many countries to a near
halt.
The European initiative, called Pan-European Privacy
Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT https://www.pepp-pt.org),
follows the successful use of smartphones in some Asian
countries to track the spread of the virus and enforce
quarantine orders, although their methods would violate strict
European data protection rules.
PEPP-PT, which brings together 130 researchers from eight
countries, aims to launch its platform by April 7, said
Hans-Christian Boos, founder of German tech startup Arago and a
member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's digital advisory council.
Merkel, in isolation after being treated by a doctor who
tested positive for COVID-19, said she would recommend such an
app as long as it was effective and voluntary.
"I would of course also be prepared to use it myself to help
other people," the conservative leader told reporters.
Epidemiologists say contact tracing will become a vital
weapon in containing future flare-ups in COVID-19, the flu-like
disease caused by coronavirus, once national lockdowns succeed
in slowing the rapid spread of the virus.
"We all know that, as a society and an economy, we cannot go
on like this for an extended period of time," Marcel Salathe,
professor of digital epidemiology at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology in Lausanne, told a news briefing.
"There is a more efficient way to break this exponential
trend of growth."
The illness can be passed on by people showing no symptoms,
putting a premium on warning those at risk of infection swiftly
after an individual tests positive.
LOGGING CONNECTIONS
The new platform would make anonymous use of low-energy
Bluetooth technology in a way that respects the European Union's
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and would not require
the intrusive tracking of location data.
It would log connections made between smartphones on a
device, rather than a central server, for two weeks, using
strong encryption. Only local health authorities, deemed
'trusted' persons, could download data so they can notify people
at risk of infection and tell them to go into isolation.
A study https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/30/science.abb6936.full
by researchers at Oxford University's Big Data Institute said
60% of a country's population would need to be involved for the
approach to be effective. Those without smartphones could wear
Bluetooth-enabled armbands.
German research body Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute
(HHI) has worked on the technology platform with Vodafone
and others. It has recruited volunteers from the German
army to measure how different smartphone brands communicate with
each other.
The PEPP-PT project is similar to Singapore's TraceTogether
app but differs in some respects: By using country codes it can
work across borders, said Fraunhofer HHI head Thomas Wiegand.
Separately, a group of Berlin startups, led by data
management company via, fintech group finleap and insurance tech
firm Wefox Group, said that it planned to launch its own contact
tracing app called Healthy Together https://gesund-zusammen.de
next week.
Sascha Gartenbach, founder and chief executive of via, said
the Healthy Together group was in touch with PEPP-PT on
collaborating. "Our approaches are complementary," he told
Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke, Holger Hansen and
Michelle Martin; Editing by Keith Weir and Edmund Blair)
