SAP

Company should make European Corona apps compatible with each other

The German software company SAP, together with the Telekom subsidiary T-Systems, is to make the corona warning apps of the EU member states compatible. The EU Commission has asked the two companies to develop a technical solution for this, a commission spokesman said on Friday to the AFP news agency. Accordingly, a platform is to be established on which the different apps can exchange information.
The idea of ​​so-called tracing apps is to warn users when they have been in contact with a corona infected person. In Germany, there has been a Corona warning app developed on behalf of the federal government since mid-June. According to official information, more than 16.5 million people downloaded it.
Many other EU countries have also launched such applications. However, because the apps have so far not been able to communicate with each other, they only work to a limited extent abroad. From the beginning, the EU Commission had insisted not only on compliance with EU data protection requirements, but also on the networking of warning apps. Technically, however, this is complicated.
SAP and T-Systems are now to set up a platform on which the apps can exchange data across borders. If a user in one app claims to have been infected with Corona, the other apps can access this information. For example, users of the Italian app can be notified when they are near an infected user of the German app or vice versa.
The development and implementation of the new platform will probably not be completed until the end of summer. The commission said that implementation should take three to four weeks. The platform solution also only works with apps that only store user data on the device. The German app, like most others in Europe, uses this "decentralized" approach.
The apps from France and Hungary, on the other hand, forward the data directly to a central server - and are thus initially out of the question for cross-border information exchange.

Credit: © Ina FASSBENDER