How is this different from existing Covid Apps?

How is this different from existing Covid-19 digital contact tracing Apps

Digital contact tracing Apps have been deployed by numerous governments around the world and their performance has been disappointing. The vast majority of these Apps contain the same technology solution – the Google & Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN). GAEN was built swiftly at the beginning of the pandemic and, with hindsight, did not include numerous features needed to successfully find and alert infected people before they are infectious. There are five things that must be true to break a chain of transmission:

Both people in an encounter must want to use the App (adoption)
Both people’s phones must be compatible with App (compatibility)
The two Apps must measure the encounter accurately enough to meaningfully measure the risk of transmission (accuracy)
A potentially infected person must receive an alert before they become infectious (speed)
The person receiving the alert must want to follow the advice (compliance)

Existing Apps do not perform well on any of these measures. Applying these factors to existing Apps shows that we can expect them to prevent just 3 out of 100 potential transmissions (or 3% of transmission chains broken). This also appears to be their performance in the real world. A study of the App in the UK found that it prevented 284,000 transmissions, whilst during the same period 7.3 million people contracted Covid-19. That produces an estimate of 3.7% of transmissions chains broken.

The other issue is false alerts. With poor accuracy many people who are not infected received alerts. The UK study showed 20 people were alerted for every infected person who received an alert. This was very disruptive for businesses and was call “pingdemic” in the UK.

Proxximos uses different technology

The Proxximos system uses different technology. Running the same analysis we expect a Proxximos App deployed at country level to prevent 50-60% of transmission, and a wearable solution in a facility to be close to 100% effective at preventing onward transmissions in a facility. And because accuracy is much higher, Proxximos would not create a “pingdemic”. Proxximos has patents filed around our approach.

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