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As indicated by C Baraniuk in the BMJ, a fact that has become increasingly clear in the current COVID-19 pandemic is the wide disparity of success in disease control between different countries. For example, South Korea has had a remarkable success in controlling the pandemic by limiting the focal spread of cases, at least in part due to the application of stringent COVID-19 testing and containment strategies, as well as giving its citizens access to rapidly updated COVID-19 records and healthcare information.1–3 Indeed, technologies for focal containment have become such a pressing issue that some countries, such as the USA, are creating specific mission-critical data partnerships for smartphone approaches to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic (such as the partnership with Apple).4
While smartphone data access can be a key tool for the National Health Service (NHS), the view of the public is often missing from related discussions. In a UK-based survey, conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, we found …