Ireland’s Health Service Executive has announced the code for its COVID-19 Tracker app will be donated as Open Source to Linux Foundation Public Health initiative.
The move is hoped to help regions worldwide quickly build and deploy their own contact tracing apps.
In Ireland 1 million people installed the app within the first 2 days, with the total number of installations reaching 1.3 million, representing 30% of people in Ireland.
The donated app will be called COVID Green and the repository will be managed by the developers NearForm.
Source code for the COVID Green mobile app is available now on GitHub and soon will be followed by all matching backend code.
Fran Thompson, Chief Information Officer of the HSE, said: “We are pleased to contribute COVID Green, the open source code behind Ireland’s COVID Tracker app, to Linux Foundation Public Health.”
“This app is a great demonstration of innovation within the Irish health sector combined with the IT capabilities of the Irish software industry. We’re immensely proud of the work we’ve undertaken in partnership with NearForm in responding to the pandemic. We are looking forward to collaborating with other public health authorities around the world via Linux Foundation Public Health to assist them in quickly replicating our approach while learning from their experiences.”
HSE also commented to said: “Making the code available through Linux Foundation Public Health means that the Irish team will be able to benefit from work that other countries and states in the US do using our code to continue to improve the Covid Tracker Ireland app.”
