Q&A: The technology behind domestic COVID certification

Med-Tech Innovation News spoke to Andy Reid, founder of tested.me, about its technology that provides COVID certification as the UK continues to emerge from lockdown. 

The technology itself that could be used for COVID certification, is there much difference between this technology and ones that would be used to share information with your GP, for example?

Yes, there is definitely a difference as it can be used for COVID health verification and certification, the technology itself is used for personal “certification”, which is a wider conversation around being able to control and share your personal information with sources that you have chosen to share your personal information with. 

In this instance you would be choosing to share “only” your COVID health status, as currently defined as: your vaccination status, first Jab, second jab, booster jab, your COVID free status – diagnostic PCR test result or approved and verified rapid flow test result. Your natural and current immunity.

I believe that current technologies that share information with your GP will be sharing far more personal information with your GP in a less personalised and individual way. We could also have GP’s share “your” information that they hold relating to COVID health with your application to allow you to hold and represent safely and securely with others.

There is the inevitable civil liberties/data protection concern. Who would see this data and who would it be shared with?

We have the individual’s civil liberties at the core of our design, we are ‘tech for good’. You have your information in your profile, we secure this data for you and you choose who you share this information with on a case-by-case basis.

As an extension to that question, what safeguards can you put in place to allow people to both have a COVID certificate and to choose who it can be shared with?

The design of the system allows you to have the information in your app shared with others by presenting your QR code to them in person, that requires them to scan this in your presence and you to approve this scan on your device before they can see it, or for you to have an anti-tamper certificate presented or sent to them electronically that they can check either electronically or offline with the out of app solution.

How do you go about broadening the access to your technology? E.g., not everybody will have a smartphone and/or familiar with the workings of such technology. 

We have an offline certificate that can be produced and presented to an individual. This certificate has verification and anti-tamper security built into the solution. We are also working on solutions that will allow browser-based user authentication and non-smartphone integration.

What do you think might be the biggest barrier to this being adopted, nationally? 

The biggest barrier is helping people to understand that this is their data, controlled by them and shared by them. We are not a government, we are designing something that we believe is inclusive and a technology to help them get back to the things that they love in a safe and secure way.