Linux Foundation founded an initiative for COVID-19 exposure notification apps

July 20, Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports free and open-source software like Linux, announced a new initiative “Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH)”. It aims to help public health authorities fight against COVID-19 and future epidemics with open source technologies.

The new initiative will support the use of open-source technologies by public health authorities that fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus. Specifically, it will focus on exposure notification applications that use the “Google Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN)” system.

The seven Premier members are Cisco, doc.ai, Geometer, IBM, NearForm, Tencent, and VMware (Dell Technologies).

One of the two projects that LFPH support is “COVID Shield”, developed by “Shopify”, a volunteer group in Canada. The other is “COVID Green”, developed by NearForm as part of the Irish Government’s response to the pandemic. These two applications have been deployed in Canada, Ireland, and several U.S. states. In addition, TCN Coalition, a global community that develops exposure alert protocol TCN Protocol, is merged into LFPH. It will expand its support for PHA’s testing, tracing, and isolation activities.

Coronavirus contact tracing applications (for example, “COCOA”, developed in Japan) are expected to be an effective measure against the coronavirus pandemic, and many of these applications use Google and Apple API. In regards to open-source applications, there is “Corona-Warn-App” developed in Germany.

Linux Foundation Public Health
https://www.lfph.io/