The Department of Health (DOH) is working with Google and Apple for a contact tracing application to help in locating contacts of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases.
During a joint hearing of the House committees on health and informations and communications technology on Tuesday, March 9, DOH Undersecretary Eric Tayag disclosed that the agency will soon launch a digital contact tracing app that it co-developed with the two multinational companies.
"We have inked an agreeement with both Google and Apple, and we are close to launching it. This is the Google-Apple exposure notification express," said Tayag, who heads the DOH's Knowledge Management and Information Technology Services (KIMITS).
Tayag said the application is expected to complement the government's manual contact tracing efforts and will be an "automatic contact tracing application wherein there will be no identification of the user who will use the application."
He did not elaborate further on the features of the upcoming Google-Apple application.
The DOH official, however, said the agency does not oppose the House Resolution No. 1536 filed by Speaker Lord Allan Velasco, which calls for a "unified national contact tracing protocol" from the Interagency Task Force (IATF) on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and its designation of a government agency as a centralized repository of information.
But he said "the purpose of contact tracing technologies shall be clearly defined and shall be based on acceptable policies and laws only."
Tayag also recommended that DOH be the personal information controller to oversee the collection of all the health and health-related data.
The DOH heads the IATF. "Only the national government and the LGUs shall be responsible for processing COVID-19 related data, and shall be considered as personal information controllers," he said, citing the Republic Act No. 10173, or the Data Privacy Act of 2012.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), meanwhile, was proposed to oversee the contact tracing system and develop necessary applications "to ensure seamless flow of data"; while the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to deploy such technologies.
For local government units (LGUs) that have already invested in technologies for their contract tracing efforts, Tayag said they should adopt privacy measures and register and integrate their contact tracing applications with the national government.
The IATF, in several issuances, had mandated the use of the StaySafe.Ph app for use of national government and local government units.
But even government agencies and LGUs endorsed and had their respective digital contract tracing initiatives.
"Critical to the adoption of technologies is the trust and efficacy. To foster trust in the use of these technologies, proper privacy and security consideration must be set in place. For them to be useful, they must be used by at least 60 percent of the population," Tayag pointed out.
The two House committees later adopted HR 1536.