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DAmerican companies Apple and Google, such as German researchers and British health authorities, are working on new applications to trace the chains of infection in the Covid 19 pandemic. As of next week, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) could present its first own solution based on the technology of the German initiative “PEPP-PT”.
Coordinator Chris Boos, an IT entrepreneur and government advisor, announced the launch last week. In early May, Apple and Google will follow suit, also announcing anonymous tracking technology for mobile phones based on Bluetooth radio last week.
The concept of the German research group as well as that of the two software groups and smartphone manufacturers are similar in every detail. However, a PEPP-PT spokeswoman denied close technical cooperation at WELT’s request. This could be fatal, because if the warning applications are not compatible with each other, the technology is unlikely to be successful.
Because whether applications can become more than just action applications depends mainly on the number of simultaneous users. Only if enough people activate the programs can they help break the chains of infection.
50 million users for success
Both Google and Apple’s solution and PEPP-PT technology generate an identification number on the user’s smartphone, which the phone continuously emits, similar to a headlight. For this, the two groups use the Bluetooth radio standard “Bluetooth Low Energy” (BLE). Anyone who gets so close to another application user that an infection is possible and probable, according to the RKI guideline, a contact of more than 15 minutes with a distance of less than two meters is required, their phone stores the number of the other part.
If a user is now positive for corona virus, they must enter the test result in their application. If a laboratory or health authority confirms the result of this test, the user application in question uploads the contact list to a central server. This decrypts the data and sends a warning to all relevant contacts of the 14 day incubation period.
However, for this warning system to work, enough people in one region must install the technology on their smartphone. The German research group assumes that at least 60 percent of the population, that is, almost 50 million people, would have to install the application.
But in Germany only about 59 million people use a smartphone. So almost 85 percent of them would have to download and activate the same app. So far, however, there is no program that has achieved such success rates.
Incentives necessary to participate.
That is why the Apple and Google approach seems more promising: the two manufacturers want to bring anti-corona technology to phones by updating the operating system and thus eliminate the threshold of inhibiting the installation of the application. After updating their phones, users only have to agree to activate the system.
However, a forced install through upgrade does not replace voluntariness. Because users can simply turn off their smartphone. Also, not all smartphones support the technology. Older models, for example, have not mastered the BLE radio standard or have long received no new software updates from manufacturers.
That is also the reason why Google wants to support its anti-corona app only from Android 6 operating system, which was released in 2015, but was only used by many manufacturers as of 2016. However, this would exclude many smartphones. who are only four or five years old.
That is why behavioral economists are now focusing on creating incentives to participate, for example, subsidizing the purchase of new phones with software. “Many people are willing to adhere to the rules and cooperate if the costs are very low, the social benefits are very high and many others comply with the rules,” said Cologne economist Axel Ockenfels at WELT.
“Perhaps the most important challenge is to involve as many as possible. There are statistical and epidemiological reasons for this, but also behavioral science reasons, because the number of participants is ‘self-reinforcing’: the more you participate, the stronger the norm and the greater the will and desire to participate yourself. ” So it depends on how The behavioral scientist says that the people who present their concept to users are: “An application that helps us fight the virus in joint cooperation should be more successful than the application itself, which means it should inform to others about my risk. “
But Ockenfels is also in favor of using at least a “little restriction”: “Many people feel comfortable, so the decision to use the application should be very simple and easy.” So it can make a big difference if you automatically install the app on all smartphones and respond to the installation, if you want to ‘opt out’ or if you are simply asked to install and use the app voluntarily. “In comparable cases, studies would have shown that minimal use of coercion in the form of an automatic smartphone update made no difference to users, but nevertheless led to more than 50 percent usage.
