COVID-19 Certificates [COVID-19]

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Standardised COVID-19 Immunity Test Certificates

• IRAS ID

  286875

• Contact name

  David Stephensen

• Contact email

  david.stephensen@nhs.net

• Sponsor organisation

  East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 2 months, 10 days

• Research summary

  The NHS already has tests available for COVID-19 antibodies in the blood, and should soon have a vaccination available as well. Such people would benefit from being issued with COVID-19 Certificates to prove that they are immune or vaccinated and not a risk of infecting others. This will be extremely beneficial to everyone concerned. However, we must ensure that these COVID-19 certificates are not easily forged, copied or passed between people, as this would undermine trust in the entire system. Our solution is to use cryptographically protected and privacy preserving electronic certificates, that conform to the new World Wide Web (W3C) Recommendation: the Verifiable Credentials Data Model. People can store these certificates on their laptops, mobile phones etc. and show them to anyone when required. It is important that these electronic certificates are strongly bound to their owner and cannot be passed from device to device. It is also important that the NHS can instantly revoke these certificates when circumstances demand e.g. a new strain of the virus starts to circulate. It is also important that the user can access these certificates without needing yet more usernames and passwords. Our solution provides all these desirable features.
  The purpose of the current research is to migrate our existing proof of concept, which was built on laptops at the University of Kent, onto mobile phones, and connect it to the EKHUFT COVID-19 test database. We will then test these mobile phone apps with staff and patients, first in a laboratory at the University of Kent, and then in an operational environment at a Kent hospital. (If the University is still closed when testing starts then these tests will be performed remotely over the Internet.)

  A demonstration of our proof of concept is available on YouTube at:
  https://youtu.be/Q-1X1FRSTss

• REC name

  London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  20/PR/0519

• Date of REC Opinion

  13 Jan 2021

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion