Zuhlke supported the development and launch of the new NHS Covid-19 app for England & Wales

A team of 70 Zuhlke engineers and consultants supported the delivery of the new NHS Covid-19 app, part of the NHS Test and Trace service in England and NHS Wales Test, Trace, Protect service.  It was developed in just twelve weeks from start to roll-out.

London 24 September 2020 - Zuhlke has worked closely with the NHS Test and Trace Programme to have delivered the NHS Covid-19 app, launching in England and Wales on September 24th. 

Neil Moorcroft, the Director who led the Zuhlke team, said: “Designing and developing a feature-rich, medical grade contact tracing app, that can scale to millions of users, be accurate, and ensure data privacy, in twelve weeks was a tremendous challenge. We owe the success of this project to a global team of 70 of our best staff: ranging from our product and design team who ensured usability and uptake; architects who know how to design secure systems that can scale; and software engineers who develop and test effectively to ensure high quality.”

Simon Thompson, Managing Director of the NHS Covid-19 app said: “Team Zuhlke has worked with us as a core part of our team to deliver the NHS Covid-19 app in a matter of months. They have brought to life a product that provides a daily benefit to the user as well as contact tracing. Accessibility is AA compliant, and it is in more than ten languages.  There is also a privacy protecting QR code check-in system to name only a few of its features: an enormous challenge delivered on time and to budget” 

Wolfgang Emmerich, CEO of Zuhlke UK, commented that: “From the moment that Zuhlke started on this project we knew that we had to bring to bear our unique combination of experience. The ability to develop rapidly comes from an architecture that allows parallel development of multiple feature sets.  This same architecture must also be able to scale rapidly to millions of users, which is experience that Zuhlke has gained from developing retail banking applications. 

“The NHS Covid-19 app is also a medical device and has now achieved a CE mark, so Zuhlke’s decades of experience in medical device software development processes, and certification, was vital.  The third element that was essential was that Zuhlke was one of the earliest adopters of the GDS Service Design Manual for software development. Implementing this way of working was key to be able to rapidly iterate and deliver features and functions over the past nine weeks.”

“The unification of technology, engineering and medical compliance” said Fabrizio Ferrandina, CEO of the Zühlke Group, “is a trend that we are seeing globally. The “App as a Medical Device” is a remarkable evolution of the mobile phone that is transforming digital health in all its manifestations. Zuhlke’s decades of experience in all these fields has allowed our team to deliver the NHS Covid-19 app as well as become the trusted partner of many other stakeholders in the public and health-tech arenas.”

About Zuhlke

As a service provider for innovation projects, Zuhlke transforms expertise in business and technology into solutions that amaze its clients. The company develops economically successful products, services and business models for the digital future, from the idea to implementation and operation. More than 1200 experts with experience gathered from over 10,000 projects contribute to this process. The Zuhlke Group has a presence in Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Austria, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hong Kong and Singapore. In 2019, the company generated revenue of CHF 170 million (EUR 153 million).