Apple Publishes Documentation on COVID-19 Tracing API, Public Release In Mid-May

Image via Apple  This month is the launch of Apple and Google’s joint project on contact tracing Android and iPhone users. iOS 13.5 has ...

Image via Apple 

This month is the launch of Apple and Google’s joint project on contact tracing Android and iPhone users. iOS 13.5 has not been released for the public yet, but developers and iOS 13 beta testers are getting early access to the feature. While many public health authorities, health insurance companies, governments and healthcare companies worldwide are developing their own apps to enable users to input their positive coronavirus test information and send out random identifiers to other users who had close contact with them, for at least 10 minutes and less than 6 feet within the infected person.

Apple has a webpage that contains documentation pertaining to the functionality of the contact tracing feature and a FAQ page regarding the feature. These include documentation focusing on the processes and specifications of Bluetooth and cryptography in the exposure notification system made by the software and cryptography experts in Apple’s small committee that helped create this modelling tool. There is also documentation to the iOS framework API of the contact tracing feature and all of these reports detail the aspects of the programming, processes and the tools used to create contact tracing on the iPhone.

Developers, software engineers and anyone who is interested in the process of COVID-19 exposure notifications can visit Apple’s webpage here. It has all of the resources to develop a coronavirus tracking app and the techniques of how the features work. The contact tracing API in iOS 13.5 will be released to the public in mid-May, once the iOS update is released as well.