During the UK’s response to COVID-19, a number of third-party
apps and websites have been collecting COVID-19 symptom data in
order to track the spread of the virus.
The apps or websites encourage users to submit their symptoms and
basic demographic data.
What is Project OASIS
jHub has been brought in to provide assistance, coordination and
coherence of the COVID-19 symptom tracker apps; including
facilitating the secure transfer of relevant symptom and
epidemiology data from the third party COVID-19 apps to the NHSx
datastore.
How does it work?
jHub will receive and review the data, removing any information
which may inadvertently identify users, ensuring that only
symptom and demographic data is included. The data will then be
checked for any security issues, with any incorrect or duplicate
data also being erased.
jHub will then securely share the data with NHSX, (NHS England)
which will then be used to inform their COVID-19 response by
giving a clearer understanding as to which areas in the UK the
virus is spreading and how quickly.
With the personal nature of the data being collected, Project
OASIS will adhere to strict controls to ensure the data sharing
meets data protection legislation.
Natasha Gedge, the Chief Operating Officer at jHub, has been
working on this project and had this to say:
At jHub, we are always working to deliver for UK Defence and we
are proud to be able to take our approach, and apply it in
support of the NHS and the people of the UK
Andrew Buckley, an innovation scout working at the medical
section of jHub, jHubMed, also added his thoughts:
Symptom tracking really is a forecasting super power, tightly
binding decisions at the highest level to the day-to-day
experience of our valuable contributors. It’s fantastic and
humbling to be at JHub, working closely with NHSx, to yolk the
innovation and energy of our extraordinary app community and
help beat Covid!
Symptom tracking apps working with the NHS and jHub
NHSx and jHub are only working with apps that have been assessed
to the NHS Digital Health Technology Standard or against the
Digital Assessment Questionnaire (DAQ)
At the time of writing NHSx and jHub have been working with the
following App Providers, with more to be announced shortly:
- Agitate Ink C-19
- Collected Cognition - FightCovid.info
- Corona-help.co.uk
- Evergreen
- LetsBeatCovid.net
- TrackTogether
- YourMD