‘Not compliant’ – Two words that are killing Coronavirus app innovation

Well, I'm not convinced on this open letter to Apple and Google to relax government or institutional backing of apps categorised in heavily regulated industries. No medical professional would ever use a 'medical device or app' which isn't compliant by healthcare regulations and not vetted by doctors and researchers, especially if it were built in a hackathon to be published straight into the App stores. Just like if one was to use a 'banking app' that is not compliant towards financial regulations, in both industries it would be unsafe to use.

These regulations and rules don't kill app innovation, it increases the quality of them and ensures the user, whether if they are doctors or those seeking medical advice that they are safe to use. Would you use a medical or banking app that hasn't passed any regulations but looks nice? I certainly will not and if professionals find out that thats the case if your app becomes popular, prepare for industry scrutiny and Apple / Google will eventually pull your app down.

The authors use the KCL COVID-19 [0] and Howwefeel [1] apps as reasons for the case of a new quality globalised COVID-19 app. But there are already plenty of apps that not only do more than COVID-19 symptom tracking and are available worldwide [2][3][4], and are all registered medical devices.

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I would have to side with Apple and Google here.

[0] https://covid.joinzoe.com

[1] https://www.howwefeel.org

[2] https://www.khealth.ai

[3] https://ada.com

[4] https://www.babylonhealth.com

Why should they reduce their guard when there are many scams and abusive apps being created to take advantage of the panic?

There's another half to the story.