What went wrong with the US $ 44 million vaccine data system?

Pang says he spent three weeks trying to log into VAMS, but constantly found himself on the patient dashboard instead of the clinic admins. During this time, her staff vaccinated hundreds of people a day and kept track of their information on paper forms. The university has created a bank of volunteers to sit in a room and copy all the information into VAMS.

Finally, the local hospital helped him connect to the system. The clinic used it for three days. On the last day, 20 new volunteers arrived ready to work. But they had already logged into VAMS to receive the necessary vaccines and there was no way to move them from patient accounts to staff accounts.

The next day, they went back to paper.

“A good system is easier to use than not to use. If people write this down on paper, something’s wrong, ”Stone says. “How are you going to take 100 million shots in 100 days and have someone type everything in by hand?”

“There is no way this can happen without help”

“Vamsi are quisquilloso. There are days when VAMS works and days when VAMS doesn’t, ”says Courtney Rowe, a pediatric urologist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, who has volunteered to monitor people’s reactions after their vaccinations. She takes the opportunity to help people prepare for their second date. “I basically work as tech support,” he says.

Online registrations are especially difficult for older people, perhaps the worst group to test a new system in beta. Many seniors probably lost their access to the Internet when libraries and seniors’ centers closed; only 59% have broadband connections at home, according to a 2019 Pew survey. While many states offer phone lines for making appointments, people across the country have complained about the endless waits.

“There are days when VAMS works and days when VAMS doesn’t.”

“It won’t work in Internet Explorer; it only works in chrome. The “Next” button is at the very bottom and to the right, so if you’re on a cell phone, you literally can’t see it, ”Rowe says. “In the first round, most of the people using VAMS had graduate degrees. If you are 75 years old and someone asks you to log into VAMS, there is no camino it will happen without help.

After speaking with Rowe, Connecticut opened up vaccines to anyone over the age of 70. His prediction came true immediately. On day one of a new vaccination clinic in Vernon, Connecticut, 204 injections were ready, but only 52 seniors had made an appointment at VAMS.

“Our residents, and those across the state that we treat at this clinic, are frustrated, angry and confused by the ineffectiveness of this registration system,” City Manager Michael Purcaro said at a conference. hurry.

Seniors aren’t the only people who have problems if vaccination requires online registration. Language barriers will become a major problem, especially for non-native English speakers in high-risk, essential jobs. Residents of rural or poor urban areas often have limited access to the internet in the first place, a problem that disproportionately affects the same black and Latin communities that have suffered the worst trauma from the pandemic.

“There are real concerns about fairness,” says Stone. “What happens when you go to a city and 20% of the population cannot receive the notices?”

So what is wrong? In an email, a CDC spokesperson defended the system, saying appointments are not canceled at random, despite what many doctors have claimed: The problem, he said, was user error. He also described several fixes that were made in response to comments. VAMS now includes warnings when administrators do something that could affect patient appointments, for example.

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