Devils_Advocate wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2020 9:31 am
I have read a comment from the NHS Covid App team that "If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they’re positive or negative."
You have to wonder how good this app is and how much crap will come to light over the coming weeks and months but hopefully this will be the exception and not the rule
As for the govts constant spin about this being an NHS app I did like the below forthright take on the matter
"So you have a test by NHS staff in an NHS hospital and yet it won't be linked to the App, HOW DARE they call the app the "NHS Covid19 App". It is clearly run by a private firm for profit, procured by the UK Govt, funded by the UK taxpayer. NOT run by the NHS at all."
I think this is the combination of several different things amalgamated into one and is part of what I mentioned earlier about people just listening to hearsey.
So if you have a retrospective result ( more than a month) then that would completely make sense that it can't be included. The random keys which are generated are only valid for 28 days so therefore if you were found positive in say 25th August, they won't be inputting your result into the system as they exposure check won't work. You keys wont exist. It will only be useful if you have had the app working for a while and get a result whilst you have been using the app. So basically from now onwards.
As far I'm aware, there are certain healthcare providers (and yes the NHS is obviously one of them) can submit the patient keys to notify the global exposure system of that. That code is probably as was said, whereby in some cases a private company was used and so as a verifying process they ask the patient to submit the result (the code identifies the test result stored and allows it to be submitted). This is obviously to stop any old Tom Dick and Harry just submitting fraudulent results.
I think we live in a world where if it's not perfect it's useless. When developing something like his it's an iterative process, if there is a bug (battery drain etc) report it. Let developers know what is wrong so we can fix it. And updates happen very quickly, so if there is a battery drain issue today doesn't mean it will exist in 3 days time.
Again everyone can do what they want, but the core technology behind his has been tried and tested in other countries for many months, and the exposure system has to work with the strict Apple Google guidelines.
I don't work for the government / NHS / healthcare provider. I'm a software engineer who have been following the all of the development of this system over many months. I think this app (or any which uses the exposure system) is an important as a mask and washing hands in combating this disease. The more analytics we can provide the better, and this is the one of the easiest way.