The UK IT Industry awards 2021: Zühlke UK

Zühlke won the Development Team of the Year award for developing the NHS COVID-19 app for NHS Test & Trace. Our only goal was to have an impact on the spread of the virus in England and Wales and save lives. This required us to design, build and launch the app within 12 weeks, to get ahead of the expected second wave.

It was an incredibly ambitions timetable; we released the MVP for public trial in Newham and the Isle of Wight after only six weeks, before scaling up the platform and features for the full national launch six weeks later.

Achieving this speed of delivery, while maintaining the highest levels of quality required of a regulated, class one medical device, necessitated highly innovative approaches to delivery and engineering that have transformed our ways of working.

Tell us more about your project

We operated in a highly incremental, agile way, with policy, compliance, user research and design, all embedded within the weekly development build cycle. The exclusive use of native cloud services and the automation of every aspect of the build, test and deployment process, enabled us to deliver at incredible speed.

With the key measure of success being a real reduction in infection rates, we knew the app would require massive uptake and ongoing user engagement. Embedding usability research and design, with a specific focus on hard-to-reach groups - such as those with disabilities and people with English as a foreign language - created engagement across society, not just with digital natives.

Finally, and most importantly, the privacy and data security concerns of the public had to be addressed. The app’s core function was to identify close contacts of individuals that later tested positive for COVID. The public had to be certain that this information remained private and anonymous.

We worked hand-in-hand with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Information Commissioners Office, Apple and Google, to ensure that the decentralised exposure notification API and all data used for epidemiological analysis was 100% anonymous and secure. This work was key to building public trust in the app and the service.

What feedback have you had from users?

The app has been downloaded over 30 million times and was second only to Zoom in the App Store charts during the first lockdown. We have a 4.6-star rating on iOS and 4.1 on Android, with some great written feedback in the reviews section. The responses praise the simplicity of the app and its ease of use, as well as the information provided about the COVID measures in your area and its focus on privacy.

How has your project delivered value within the NHS & DHSC?

The University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and the Alan Turing Institute published a paper in Nature showing that the app had averted over 600,000 cases of COVID-19 and prevented more than 9,000 deaths in the three months following its public launch.

The app’s QR venue check-in feature has been used more than 255 million times to date, with over 12,000 venues determined to have been at risk between December 2020 and the end of mandatory check-ins.

Data science analysis and research based on anonymous data collected from the app allowed epidemiologists to identify outbreaks as they were occurring. This data also enabled the team to develop new algorithms that greatly improved the Bluetooth exposure notification accuracy.

Our use of a 100% serverless cloud architecture for key exchange and APIs allowed for vast scalability at a fraction of the cost of traditional architectures. The team’s delivery speed and use of DevOps and build automation also means that the operational costs are kept far lower than typical projects of this type.

Does the app have wider uses?

This app, and digital contact tracing apps in general, have been shown to be an important part of any government’s ability to fight a future pandemic. The NHS COVID app continues to support the fight against COVID and will be available to be used again in future crises.

Those users who installed the app benefitted directly from the advice and guidance provided. Beyond those users, wider society gained from the app enabling near real-time epidemiological analysis across England and Wales provided by the stream of anonymous data recording infection rates and contact frequency. This data analysis allowed scientists to track outbreaks as they were occurring, feeding vital information into the government’s overall response to the pandemic.

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The COVID app has also proven the effectiveness of using citizens’ own mobile devices to deliver medical interventions to a large population. This learning in itself is useful for policy makers.

Bespoke medical devices are expensive to design and produce, mobile apps offer lower costs and a wider reach in many medical situations, such as companion apps for drug delivery, remote consultations with healthcare professionals or long-term monitoring of an individual’s vital signs.

What motivated you to enter for an award? What do you feel are the benefits?

Celebrating success is something we try to do as often as possible and the external recognition of that success is hugely beneficial to the morale, not only of the COVID app team, but the whole Zühlke organisation. It also helps us attract the best people to our growing team, enabling us build on the success and develop our business here in the UK.

What does being a winner mean to you?

Reaching the final validates our belief that innovations in advanced technology can be a powerful force for good in society. It confirms that those values are recognised by the wider industry and reinforces our drive to deliver projects with purpose - not only by helping save lives with medical apps like this, but also by helping to prevent the climate crisis or improving digital services for everyone in the UK.

How did you find the awards evening?

It was a great night and fantastic to see so many people in our industry getting recognised for the amazing work they do. For our team, and I’m sure many others there, it was especially good to get out and celebrate after COVID lockdowns. It was also a great way to see the progress being made across the whole industry – there are so many interesting projects to learn about and brilliant people to talk to.

What are you working on for next year? Will the app evolve, or are you moving onto something new?

We will be continuing to expand our offering portfolio to address today’s market needs, such as medical devices built entirely in software, economic architectures for decarbonisation, digital services for the citizen and enabling organisations to get timely insight from their data.

At the same time, we want to focus on advancing our delivery practices and investing in further developing the skills and capabilities of our staff, particularly in building cloud-based infrastructures, data engineering and machine learning, SecOps and our expanding digital consulting practice.

We’ve also joined TechZero - the climate action group for tech companies - so we’ll be delivering on our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint to zero by the end of next year. And we’ll also be expanding our geographic reach by opening a third office outside our current locations in London and Manchester.