
‘Not compliant’ – Two words that are killing Coronavirus app innovation - dootah
https://www.mysymptoms.app/open-letter-to-google-apple-my-symptoms-app
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rvz
Well, I'm not convinced on this open letter to Apple and Google to relax
government or institutional backing of apps categorised in heavily regulated
industries. No medical professional would ever use a 'medical device or app'
which isn't compliant by healthcare regulations and not vetted by doctors and
researchers, especially if it were built in a hackathon to be published
straight into the App stores. Just like if one was to use a 'banking app' that
is not compliant towards financial regulations, in both industries it would be
_unsafe_ to use.

These regulations and rules don't kill app innovation, it increases the
quality of them and ensures the user, whether if they are doctors or those
seeking medical advice that they are safe to use. Would you use a medical or
banking app that hasn't passed any regulations but looks nice? I certainly
will not and if professionals find out that thats the case if your app becomes
popular, prepare for industry scrutiny and Apple / Google will eventually pull
your app down.

The authors use the KCL COVID-19 [0] and Howwefeel [1] apps as reasons for the
case of a new quality globalised COVID-19 app. But there are already plenty of
apps that not only do more than COVID-19 symptom tracking and are available
worldwide [2][3][4], and are all registered medical devices.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I would have to side with Apple and Google
here.

[0] [https://covid.joinzoe.com](https://covid.joinzoe.com)

[1] [https://www.howwefeel.org](https://www.howwefeel.org)

[2] [https://www.khealth.ai](https://www.khealth.ai)

[3] [https://ada.com](https://ada.com)

[4] [https://www.babylonhealth.com](https://www.babylonhealth.com)

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verdverm
Why should they reduce their guard when there are many scams and abusive apps
being created to take advantage of the panic?

There's another half to the story.

