The Government spent £25m on the Test & Trace app, but there’s been widespread criticism of the system and its impact on the spread of the Coronavirus. Mike Rhodes of ConsultMyApp tells Health Tech World that it was doomed to failure before it started
Over the past 12 months, the NHS has undergone a complete overhaul in how it delivers healthcare. Physicians have embraced a rapid roll out of digital healthcare solutions, with online medical consultations in the UK rising from just 2 percent in March 2020 to over 80 percent a month later. Now, nearly 9-in-10 GP prescriptions are issued electronically – a significant boom in comparison to the 20 percent year-on-year growth GPs were experiencing prior to the pandemic.
Mike Rhodes – ConsultMyApp
With the rise of digital healthcare and the move to a total online triage system being a relative success, there remains one question – how did the government’s attempt to deliver a world-class test and trace system fail so catastrophically?
The recent news that the NHS Test & Trace system had ‘no clear impact’ on transmission levels came as no surprise given the app’s disastrous performance throughout the pandemic. Despite the government spending a staggering £25m on the highly anticipated app, Test & Trace has failed to live up to expectations and only curbed the transmission of coronavirus by 2-5 percent last year. This is unsurprising given that only 48 percent of mobile phones were compatible with the app, and users that did download Test & Trace were offered little incentive to engage with the platform.
It’s clear that the government and its never-ending band of consultants have failed to understand the very basics of app development, marketing and user engagement, that would have otherwise ensured the system was running to an optimal level.
The in-app communication, onboarding for new users and notification systems are all well-below the standard even a junior developer could have produced, resembling the workings of someone trying to create an artificial intelligence bot with a copy of Excel. The government’s poor recruitment of talent for Test & Trace has resulted in users being inaccurately notified of COVID-exposure, told to isolate for additional time, or failing to notify users at all, all of which has led to significant uninstall numbers and a lost opportunity to protect the wellbeing of individuals up and down the country.
With the right expertise, developing an app is simple, but as Test and Trace shows, ensuring an app’s success is far more complex than registering the platform and attracting active users. ConsultMyApp offered to help the Government with its app marketing and management pro-bono to navigate these challenges, but was met with silence; the same silence that BrewDog’s CEO was met with when he offered his pub premises to help out with the vaccination programme.
With most other apps, this basic level of development and marketing may simply be a reason to uninstall or move to a competitor app, but with Test & Trace it is quite literally a case of life and death. Achieving downloads on only 40 percent of the potential devices is, quite simply, a travesty.
Compare this to user engagement for the digital healthcare company Doctor Care Anywhere who, over the past 12 months, has experienced a 390 percent rise in monthly consultations and now covers over 2 million customers in the UK – up 186.2 percent on the previous year. The difference is obvious. Doctor Care Anywhere is supported by proven developers and app-native marketing specialists, whilst Test & Trace recruited overpriced consultants with little experience building and marketing solid native apps. This dramatic contrast only highlights the potential that could have been achieved with the Test & Trace app, if the government had followed the same app procedures as almost all successful businesses during the pandemic.
With the renewed debate around vaccine passports gaining traction, now it is imperative that the government looks to the real experts in the field of app-development, marketing & user engagement to help implement this next crucial step for Test & Trace.
The addition of a vaccine passport offers a crucial opportunity to increase the app’s uptake and engagement to 80 percent+ across society. However, if the government sticks to the status quo, it will only amount to yet another disastrous failure – with society paying the price.
Ultimately, Test & Trace was not only faulty at its core, but it also failed to recognise that in order to drive installs and retain users, app optimization and pre and post-acquisition marketing was essential. However, with the right expertise, there is still time for Test & Trace to have a significant impact on infection rates and help society to regain some remnants of normality moving forward. Now it is up to the government to recognise their mistakes and accept that in order to make the app a success, they must turn to the industry experts.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
__cfduid
1 month
The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information.
__hssrc
session
This cookie is set by Hubspot. According to their documentation, whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement
1 year
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
1 year
This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
1 year
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
1 year
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Cookie
Duration
Description
__hssc
30 minutes
This cookie is set by HubSpot. The purpose of the cookie is to keep track of sessions. This is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp.
tve_leads_unique
1 month
This cookie is set by the provider Thrive Themes. This cookie is used to know which optin form the visitor has filled out when subscribing a newsletter.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Cookie
Duration
Description
_gat
1 minute
This cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Cookie
Duration
Description
__hstc
1 year 24 days
This cookie is set by Hubspot and is used for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, utk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
_ga
2 years
This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid
1 day
This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
hubspotutk
1 year 24 days
This cookie is used by HubSpot to keep track of the visitors to the website. This cookie is passed to Hubspot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
1 year
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
1 year
No description
lfuuid
9 years 11 months
Third party (Lead Forensics) cookie which enables us to track visitor behaviour on our site. Tracking is performed anonymously until a user identifies themselves by submitting a form.