Perfecto to Test Emerging COVID-19 Tracking App

With COVID-19 upending our way of life and killing thousands globally, a new app — COVID SafePaths — is set to help track the spread of the virus. And Perfecto is honored to be selected to help test the app on mobile devices in the cloud.

An App Built to Protect Communities

COVID SafePaths’ mission is to fight the pandemic by empowering people around the world to stay safe through citizen-led technology. The open source project is volunteer based and MIT led. And it is comprised of epidemiologists, engineers, data scientists, digital privacy evangelists, professors, and researchers.

The mobile app is available for both Android and iOS. When a person is diagnosed with COVID-19, they can opt to share their location history with public health officials for contact tracing.

But the app also helps those who have not been diagnosed, notifying individuals of possible exposure incidents. The app provides anonymous and aggregated data of public places where they may have been in contact with individuals who have since been diagnosed.

Because the virus spreads exponentially, early detection and tracking of potential exposures is key to slowing its growth. Contact-tracing technology can help contain an outbreak quickly, keeping communities safe.

And because Perfecto is the leader in mobile app testing, it was only natural for Perfecto to step in and assist with testing the app on Android and iOS devices in the cloud.

Perfecto Provides Critical Mobile App Testing, Geolocation Testing

As a leader in the testing space, Perfecto was approached to assist with mobile app testing of COVID SafePaths.

Given the severity of the pandemic, the performance of the app is imperative — both to keep individuals safe and to assist public health officials in keeping communities healthy. Because Perfecto can provide such thorough testing at scale — with real user conditions and environments — it made for a fitting partnership.

“Perfecto’s involvement was game changing for our contact tracing capabilities. Having access to over 10,000 devices for localization testing was essential,” says Jonathon Wright, QA leader at MIT Safe Hands project.

“After previously working with the amazing R&D team at Perfecto on a similar contact track back in 2015 for the Copenhagen Smart City app, it was critical to get them directly involved with MIT.”

The COVID SafePaths app is largely location based. The app uses each phone’s internal GPS capabilities to gather and locally record data. With Perfecto, GPS geolocation testing can easily be scaled on real devices in the testing cloud. Extended test scenario coverage and device coverage ensure the app will work consistently and reliably.

Since Perfecto’s involvement, teams across the globe have had access to real devices in which they can inject GPS locations. This was one of the major challenges with contact tracing.

Perfecto enables both manual as well as automated testing on real devices across its 11 data centers. In addition to functional testing, Perfecto supports the injection of locations (GPS addresses and coordinates) on real devices to help cover more testing abilities. Specifically, for the COVID SafePaths app, this is an essential use case to track user journeys and mimic specific paths.

See the COVID SafePaths app being testing in the Perfecto cloud:

Perfecto goes beyond location testing. You can also test things like network quality, varied device conditions, and conflicting apps. And with network virtualization, including network latency, cellular support, and 5G, 4G, and more, apps can be more thoroughly tested for better user experiences. Or, in the case of COVID SafePaths, it can provide more accurate data to public health officials to keep communities safe.

App Testing Is More Critical Than Ever

The exponential spread of COVID-19 can be slowed with the technology already in our pockets. Perfecto couldn’t be happier to support this cause and the COVID SafePaths app.

Learn more about COVID SafePaths and their mission to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

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