Member-only story
The Rise and Fall of the NHSX App
Well, the writing has been on the wall for a while, but today, the UK government officially cancelled the centralised approach of the NHSX App, and are now focusing on the Google/Apple integration:
At the end of May, the cracks were showing when the Financial Times discovered that NHSX has awarded a six-month £3.8 million contract to a company in order to investigate a system using the Google/Apple API.
The version of App trialled in the Isle of Wright was developed by Zuhlke (a Swiss company with a base in London) and Privotal (a US-based company).
The flaws
It was promised to be a world-leading App, but few technical people have ever seen it as being a solution. In fact, on 29 April 2020, many leading UK cybersecurity academics (of which I was one) wrote a letter to the UK Government [here]:
