Case Studies
Location
Waterford
“As an Ireland South East based company, NearForm continues to see tremendous growth across our business due in no small part to the highly talented Team we have assembled. Finding the right blend of exciting and meaningful projects, combined with a high ‘quality of life’ environment, makes NearForm a highly desirable place to work.”
Company Profile
Based at their headquarters in Tramore, Co. Waterford, Nearform are a global consultancy that designs and builds mission-critical digital products at speed and scale for enterprise and public sector clients.
Problem to Be Solved
On 22 March 2020, NearForm got a call from the HSE. They wanted to build a contact tracing app for Ireland to help tackle Covid-19. The team immediately got together, set up a virtual command centre and kicked off a fully remote, design-led workshop with the HSE and Department of Health to outline the requirements, scope, and functionality of the app.
The Solution
Create a Covid-19 contact tracing app that is easy to use and adheres to GDPR guidelines. The app will allow users to put in their symptoms (if any), close contact information, and allow users to get news and updates on Covid-19.
Impact for the Company
The COVID Tracker Ireland app is the most successfully deployed contact tracing app built on the decentralised model using the joint Apple-Google technology. Within 36 hours of the official launch, Ireland’s COVID Tracker app had more than one million downloads, representing more than 20% of the population of Ireland and over a quarter of all smartphone users in the country.
User setup consists of four steps, and the app does not request access to any of the user’s phone data. All contact data is stored in the app on the user’s phone and is deleted after 14 days. Close contacts are recorded only when two phones running the app are within a set proximity of each other for a minimum duration of time.
NearForm has gone on to deliver similar contact tracing solutions for various governments across the globe. The code created by NearForm to create these apps has since been named “Covid Green” and is also used by other countries around the world to build their own Covid Tracker apps.
The COVID Tracker Ireland app is now also used to hold the Covid-19 vaccine certificates in a digital barcode which can then be scanned.
