Ramping Up Covid-19 Vaccination Programs: IT at Work

AUSTIN, Texas - Jan. 28, 2021 - PRLog -- President Biden shared an encouraging note this week when he spoke to reporters about increasing the incoming administration's daily Covid-19 vaccination goal from 1 million shots to 1.5 million shots per day.

This newfound optimism is tempered, however, by the continued rocky rollout of the vaccination program across the nation.

In the face of unprecedented demand (and limited vaccine supplies), state and local public health officials are scrambling to get vaccine shots into people's arms as soon as possible.

The process has been frustrating all around. Many Americans who rejoiced in getting one of the highly sought after vaccination appointments were crushed to find their appointments canceled because the federal government had missed its forecast for available vaccine deliveries to the states.

Even incoming CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, admitted there is a major problem. Speaking to Fox News, she said, "I can't tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can't tell it to you, then I can't tell it to the governors, and I can't tell it to the state health officials… If they don't know how much vaccine they're getting, not just this week but next week and the week after, they can't plan. They can't figure out how many sites to roll out, they can't figure out how many vaccinators that they need, and they can't figure out how many appointments to make for the public."

Who Are The Primary Stakeholders In The Nation's Covid-19 Vaccination Program?

To the casual observer, it may seem incomprehensible that we were able to develop, test, and authorize two Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech for emergency use in less than a year but, so far, the process of managing the supply chain—from production to delivering shots into people's arms— has been marked by frustrating delays.

Why is this the case?

Is it a redux of the 2013 healthcare.gov website rollout that crashed and burned in the days after it was launched with great fanfare by President Obama?

Unfortunately, the analogy has some merit.

As was the case with Obamacare, IT system architects working on system integration projects for the Covid-19 vaccination efforts across the country are facing a similar challenge of how to glue together a large number of decentralized database systems operated by distinct stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry manufacturers, at least five major federal government departments, approximately 64 state and local vaccination tracking systems, as well as approximately 255 million Americans over the age of 18.

Read more...https://formaspace.com/articles/tech-lab/1295-ramping-up-...