Northern Ireland is planning to release its own coronavirus contact-tracing app within weeks, the BBC has learned.

It follows the failure of the NHS app in England, which was trialled on the Isle of Wight.

The NI app will be based on the Google/Apple model.

It is designed to be compatible with an app due to be released soon in the Republic of Ireland. That app is also based on the toolkit provided by Apple and Google.

The Apple and Google model is more privacy-focused, but provides less data to epidemiologists than the centralised version that England was trialling.

“The Health Minister has commissioned work to develop a proximity app, based on the de-centralised Google/ Apple model, for use in Northern Ireland,” said the Northern Ireland Department of Health in a statement.

“This work includes examining the interoperability of apps and the sharing of information across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic,” it said.

It added that the Information Commissioner, Equality Commission and NI Human Rights Commission were all involved in exploring “statutory information governance, equality and human rights issues”, and that their assessments would be published.