Open-sourcing the CovApp for the global healthcare community

Open-sourcing the coronavirus app (CovApp)

Data4Life is open-sourcing the CovApp. The app lets everyone assess their symptoms using a questionnaire. The app also informs users about next steps, for example, precautionary measures or contacting healthcare providers and health authorities.

The CovApp was developed by Charité university hospital in Berlin in cooperation with Data4Life.

In partnership with and authorized by Charité, we're offering a white-label CovApp version for third parties.

Supporting your fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

To help the digital health community fight the COVID-19 pandemic, we're open-sourcing the code on GitHub. Open-source software (OSS) is software with a copyright license that includes the right to view and alter the source code. You can also distribute derivative versions of the software.

We use the MIT license.

Helping healthcare providers

By implementing the CovApp, any medical institution can reduce the number of new incoming patients, cut down on unnecessary physical contact, and speed up the patient registration process.

Anyone is free to implement the CovApp in their organization. If you do so, the medical responsibility and legal liability lie with you.

Installing your custom CovApp

To get information to set up and deploy your custom CovApp application, see the setup and development documentation.

Customizing the CovApp

The CovApp gives you the following customization options:

• Change texts

• Add new languages

• Change colors on the user interface

• Use your own logo

IMPORTANT: We don't support changes in the semantic meaning or evaluation logic of the questionnaire.

To learn more about customizing the CovApp application, see the customization options documentation.

Importing data using the QR code

Filling out the survey generates a QR code for each user. As a medical institution, you can integrate this output into your information system. You must provide the individual interface and ensure that the QR code information can be ingested into your hospital information system (HIS). To learn more about integration with the hospital information system, see the FAQ blog post.

Updating the CovApp

You find our code updates on GitHub. Follow the setup instructions and create a fork (your own version) of the GitHub repository (where your versions of the files are stored).

When we publish an update of the app and the underlying questionnaire, pull requests in your repository are created automatically. Pull requests are the way GitHub informs people about changes in a repository. This way, you're informed about updates and you can stay up-to-date.

Supporting the CovApp

Data4Life can't offer support for the code repository on GitHub. We continue the development of the CovApp internally together with our cooperation partners Charité university hospital in Berlin and the Robert Koch Institute. We publish changes and new releases on GitHub.

We aren't able to react to your issues and pull requests, but we encourage you to provide feedback. We monitor potential issues, new ideas, feature requests, and might consider them for future releases.

For more information, see our GitHub developer documentation which has sections on development and customization, and check out our CovApp open-sourcing FAQ.