Uepaa’s Proximity Solution Helps Track COVID-19 Infections

When it comes to COVID-19, tracking the infection rate is critical to flattening the curve. However, traditional epidemiological tracing is labor-intensive and can be unreliable. So-called proximity technology, installed on smartphones, can improve and speed up traceability. We interviewed Mathias Haussmann, CEO and founder of Uepaa, an ETH spin-off and Venture Leader Technology alumnus that offers such a proximity solution.

Uepaa, the Zurich-based peer-to-peer software company was a Venture Kick winner in 2012, a Venture Leader Technology in 2016, and a TOP 100 Swiss Startup for six consecutive years (2012-2017). The Austrian Red Cross has implemented Uepaa's contact-tracing technology into its Stopp Corona app to help keep the curve flat while loosening the lockdown restrictions. The Uepaa technology is also used by the Operation Outbreak (O2) project, a simulation platform for infectious disease education, preparation, and data generation.
 

Mathias, Uepaa developed a safety app that can not only recognize when workers had an accident but also alert nearby colleagues or the Uepaa emergency services. What were your objectives a year ago? How has the COVID-19 affected or changed these objectives?
Apart from their common history, the Uepaa® safety app has little in common with the Proximity Kit. With the safety app, we have succeeded in establishing a new standard in the field of digital protection for a sole proprietorship, according to SUVA [the Swiss National Accident Insurance Fund] norm equipment. The time before or after COVID-19 has no influence on the objectives of this product. Of course, many projects have come to a standstill because of the situation with our corporate customers. However, we hope that the situation will calm down again after the suspension of the restrictions and that the projects can be taken up again.

You developed a contact-tracing feature. How does this feature help fight COVID-19?
We have been marketing a proximity SDK [software development kit] for smartphone applications since 2016/17. However, this does not have a dedicated functional orientation: It can be used for payment apps, ticketing applications, and contact tracing. Our SDK simplifies the use of available wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi Direct in smartphones. On the one hand, we dilute the technical limitations of Apple and Android — for example, regarding background usage and X-Platform performance; on the other hand, our cloud logic massively reduces the amount of data that has to be sent from one mobile phone to another. This is where we make the difference: A Bluetooth system in the laboratory can connect a maximum of 20 devices within one minute, compared to a system that also connects hundreds of phones in the immediate vicinity within seconds, at Zurich main station, for example.

What are the main challenges of developing and implementing this contact-tracing feature?
We only supply the proximity components “discovery” and “ranging,” but we know from our development phase that the questions “How quickly can another mobile phone be detected?” and “How reliable or robust is this detection?” are difficult to answer. Because of the technical hurdles of the operating systems and the physical hurdles of the over-the-air transmission, most Proximity SDKs fail when we are talking about more than 10 devices that might have an app running in the background. So, what worked in the lab is already reaching its limits at the bus stop, and it fails completely at rush hour at a busy train station.
So, it does not matter anymore whether centralized or decentralized architecture is used or how exactly data protection is being honored: When the important contacts cannot be recognized at all due to technical and physical limitations, the process turns into a rhetorical paper trail.

The contact-tracing feature is used by the Austrian Red Cross. Has the Swiss Red Cross or any other Swiss organization contacted you at all? Are you planning on rolling out the contact-tracing feature in other countries?
Since the end of February, we have been trying to contact the Federal Government, EPFL, and the BAG [Federal Office of Public Health]. Actually, we have been trying to get in touch since it was reported in the media that manual tracing had to be abandoned because it was becoming too personnel-intensive. Despite media coverage in the Tagesanzeiger and despite political support, an exchange has not yet taken place. At best, one gets too absorbed in the academic discourse, whether the data is stored centrally or decentrally; maybe it is a matter of other sensitive topics. We do not know.
We cannot discuss any details, but we currently see about two dozen COVID-19 related projects on our system.

What do you think this contact-tracing feature can achieve during the coronavirus pandemic?
I will leave that answer to the epidemiology experts. My opinion is that isolating patients at the time of introduction would have helped. In the current phase of loosening the lockdown restrictions, any patient who goes back into preventive self-isolation thanks to such an app helps to flatten the curve.

What is the biggest lesson that you learned during this crisis?
How hard it is to offer help. It is kind of paradoxical that the first working tracing app in Europe was developed with Swiss technology from an ETH spin-off, but here, at home, a dialog about it has never materialized.