Leveraging Technology to Scale Effective Vaccine Delivery
The development and authorization of two vaccines against the novel coronavirus in less than a year, four times faster than any other vaccine R&D initiative in history, is a testament to humankinds’ scientific ingenuity. The rapid distribution of those vaccines from a few factories to hospitals, nursing homes, and public health departments across the globe is a testament to our logistics. However, the success of our upcoming vaccination campaign, to both persuade enough individuals to receive both doses of vaccine and track their health afterwards will require a feat of both communication and information technology.
Administering a single dose of vaccine to at least 70% of the population will be challenging; however, it will require a tremendous effort to remind patients to receive their second dose a few weeks later as well as monitor any adverse effects that may arise. Answering critical questions we still have about the vaccine: how long will immunity last? Does the vaccine prevent transmission of the virus? Are there side effects we haven’t yet seen yet? will require a robust surveillance system that allows individuals to both report adverse events and possible symptoms of re-infection.
During the 2009 H1N1 epidemic, the FDA tracked immunization registry data with medical claims, which allowed public health officials to track both safety and durability of the vaccine for nearly 40 million individuals. Deploying technology that links immunization record keeping to health data will ensure that we can accomplish the same today.
At Memora Health, we’ve packaged the access and convenience of text messaging to guide patients through vaccination schedules, monitor their health, symptoms, and side effects, and nudge them to attend appointments, creating an end-to-end solution for local immunization campaigns. In fact, this combination could improve adherence to receiving both vaccination dosages, via automated reminders and medication education, and more accurately pinpoint both the duration of immunity and whether potential side effects are related to immunization or simply spurious.
So much of what we need from patients is as simple as asking them. Yet, we often wait until they come to the clinic to ask basic follow-up questions and then spend twice as much time double checking their responses with the deluge of notes in their health record. While the digitization of health care has increased the amount of noise that clinicians must wade through, it’s on us to amplify the signal and make their jobs easier.
Using the tools and technology we already have to monitor vaccine uptake, identify potential COVID19 reinfections to determine vaccine durability, and track side effects early to prevent any serious concerns from derailing vaccination campaigns altogether will be paramount to ensuring the success of our nation’s public health response as we turn a corner in this pandemic.
If the work of our team can be helpful to your organization, please reach out here or email us directly at info@memorahealth.com. We can help manage the vaccine rollout process pro bono leveraging a comprehensive triage, scheduling, and messaging system within 48 hours.
Memora Health is building the operating system for care delivery that implements intelligent, streamlined workflows and revolutionizes the patient experience outside the care setting. We offer a smart end-to-end platform that unifies fragmented health care data to enable providers, payors, and life science companies to automate care delivery operations — from patient communication to documentation to reimbursement. We uniquely use artificial intelligence to digitize existing care delivery workflows, giving clinicians infrastructure that learns from every encounter they have. Memora supports a full suite of virtual care systems from automated patient intake and scheduling to remote monitoring and care pathways to billing and documentation. Memora is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Kevin Durant, Martin Ventures, and several healthcare strategic groups.
