Since late December 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA and recommended for use by the CDC. Nevertheless, many states have seen sluggish rollouts or delays in getting vaccine doses to nursing homes, pharmacies, clinics, etc. With the recent emergency use authorization of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, there will be a lot of pressure on state governments to ensure that there won’t be further slowdowns in getting their residents vaccinated.
As technology continually enables us to challenge existing processes and allows us to become more effective and efficient, state governments could surely benefit from examining their COVID-19 vaccination process and utilize technology, particularly robotic process automation (RPA), to make these vaccination programs run smoothly. Here are a few ways that RPA could help in the coming weeks for the continued COVID-19 vaccination process:
Large-scale vaccination events – When putting together clinics or events which will allow a significant amount of people to get vaccinated quickly, there are a lot of logistical matters to consider such as personal protective equipment, staffing/volunteers and training people to appropriately assist at the event. The utilization of RPA could help both guests receiving the vaccine and volunteers; guests could utilize bots to potentially automate the enrollment process by auto-populating registration forms and volunteers could benefit from RPA to reduce the amount of training needed.
Temperature tracking for doses – COVID-19 vaccines will spoil if they reach a certain temperature, so when being transported, extra care must be taken to ensure that the doses remain at a safe temperature. RPA could be used in conjunction with sensor tags that would continuously measure the temperature of vaccine doses and transmit that data to a platform that could be utilized to monitor and track each individual batch. The information could be pushed to a tablet, smartphone or another medium for analysis.
As the country ramps up vaccination efforts in the coming weeks, RPA will undoubtedly play a role in helping these programs operate effectively and efficiently.
If your company is looking into implementing RPA in your day-to-day operations to improve internal processes, and you have questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Pat Armknecht ([email protected]) of Schneider Downs Tech Consulting group or visit www.schneiderdowns.com/rpa.
