UK COVID Symptom Research App Reaches 750,000 Downloads In A Single Day
A new UK symptom-tracking app developed by Zoe and King's College London sees massive public adoption to aid coronavirus research. The tool gathers self-reported data to help medical professionals allocate resources effectively.
A new smartphone app in the U.K. called the COVID Symptom Tracker sees massive success as it helps researchers gather crucial data about the coronavirus pandemic. Developed by health startup Zoe in partnership with King's College London, the application asks users to self-report their daily symptoms to help overwhelmed health services understand where local outbreaks occur and how to deploy limited resources effectively.
The app goes viral with 750,000 downloads within just 24 hours of its Tuesday launch, making it the third most popular app overall in the U.K. Apple App Store and the top-ranked medical application. This rapid adoption reflects a strong public desire to assist the national health response, mirroring other citizen efforts where hundreds of thousands of people volunteer to help the NHS deliver supplies to quarantined individuals.
Creators emphasize that this tool is not a diagnostic resource or a public map of infections, but rather a dedicated research instrument designed to help medical professionals plan their responses. The development team originally builds the app to identify symptom clusters and direct scarce testing kits to those areas faster, and they now plan to expand this data-collection effort to the United States in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford.