As vaccine supplies remain an immediate concern, the primary problem people have has been the struggle with getting access to appointments. In many states and counties, the process of registering is rarely easy. The registration page either is buried deep in a website’s infrastructure or breaks down consistently.
Some Big Tech companies stepped in to offer better tools for vaccine management, including Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce. In many cases, these software packages were sold and modified to accommodate a state’s unique healthcare infrastructure.
Some of them did not work out well. New Jersey purchased Microsoft’s vaccine appointment platform to assist people in getting registered, according to Bloomberg. The state found that the platform was so buggy that it took five weeks of daily fixes to keep it operable. There were reports of users getting blocked, double-booked appointments, and site crashes lasting for more than three days. In one case, an error in the system led to hundreds of people showing up at hospitals without appointments. Appointments already set up were canceled.
Other states ended up having significant issues making sure access was available statewide. California partnered with retail startup Salesforce to create My Turn. While the site had minimal reported technical problems, it only provided vaccine offerings in urban areas, which meant that California’s rural and suburban residents had no access to appointments through My Turn.
These sorts of technological gaps have frustrated thousands. Still, it led others to innovate and build workable products. For example, software engineer Nick Muerdter made Vaccine Spotter. Muerdter told the Washington Examiner that he created the website after hearing about a website having issues by using bot programs to search through commercial pharmacy websites to find appointment vacancies. Not only does this method automate the appointment process, but it checks several locations.
But all of this is symptomatic of a more significant problem within healthcare technology.
“The problem that we have is that the federal government hasn’t implemented any standards that states or counties could adopt,” said Justin Beck, CEO and founder of the public health company Contakt World. Beck told the Washington Examiner that the federal government had not incorporated any guidelines for how vaccine appointments work. It also has not provided the particular tools to transmit information about vaccines between private and government-owned companies. Any means that do exist are limited to whatever the county chooses.
“If you had asked me about the problems with contact tracing two or three months ago, I would be telling you the same things about the same problems,” Beck said. He said he believes that the government needs to step in and offer some form of standard to simplify the process required for vaccines.
“Right now, it’s impossible to deploy something in multiple states or multiple counties and have information that talks to each other,” Beck added. “The federal government needs to create databases that all the private companies and medical companies can talk to. But it also needs to protect the data and maintain interoperability, all while maintaining the data on a free market.”
Much of this may sound theoretical, but Beck sees these as the fundamental processes required to help the medical infrastructure communicate with one another.
