Apple has launched a study into whether its Apple Watch can can be used to detect COVID-19.
The tech giant has joined forces with the University of Washington and the Seattle Flu Study for the purposes of the investigation.
The company first announced plans to stage the study in September last year, but Apple has only just launched the research, as it seeks to establish whether the Apple Watch can be used to detect various respiratory illnesses.
The study is expected to take up to six months to complete and enrolment for the research is now open to people who are 22 or older and living in the greater Seattle area.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, the NHS contact tracing app for COVID-19 was been blocked for breaking the terms of an agreement made with Apple and Google.
An update to the app – which allows users to check-in to locations, such as pubs and hairdressers, in order to be notified about possible exposure to COVID-19 – saw the app banned on the iOS and Google Play app stores for breaching the terms of a privacy agreement.
The plan had been to ask users to upload logs of venue check-ins if they tested positive for the virus so that they could be used to warn others, but both Apple and Google had explicitly banned such a function from the launch of the app last year.
Under the terms that all health authorities signed up to in order to use Apple and Google's privacy-centric contact-tracing tech, they had to agree not to collect any location data via the software.
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