Arlington woman who built centralized coronavirus vaccine appointment site says Massachusetts system ‘hindering’ people

An Arlington software developer who spent her maternity leave building an online vaccination platform that rivals the state’s said the status quo is “hindering” people from getting access to the coronavirus vaccine.

“There clearly is a need for … a one-stop shop for people to come and figure out how do I get vaccinated, where do I go and when,” Olivia Adams said Saturday in a livestreamed Facebook discussion with state Sen. Diana DiZoglio, D-Methuen. “So the idea of having a singular portal for people to sign up — it just takes that one step further, and I think it’s totally possible.”

During her maternity leave with her 3-month-old son, Adams, who works for athenahealth, a Watertown company that makes electronic health records, created www.macovidvaccines.com, where you can see at a glance what vaccine providers have availability so you can sign up for a COVID-19 vaccine.

The mother of two said her portal plugs into websites that have state-run vaccination sites as well as websites for pharmacies and other locations that offer the vaccine.

“And it pings them every five minutes, and it asks them: Do you have any availability and when and how many slots,” she said, “and we save that information so whenever you come to my website, it shows you at a glance which locations have availability, and so that refreshes automatically every five minutes for you to get the most recent information.”

DiZoglio said she is the lead sponsor of Senate Bill 709, a bill that would create a centralized system where residents could preregister for a vaccine by providing information including their name, their age and any underlying health conditions they might have. It would then alert them when they become eligible for a vaccine, and provide them with an opportunity to book an appointment.

That kind of centralized preregistration system would prevent the state’s current website from crashing because too many people are trying to sign on at once, DiZoglio said.

The states most successful at getting vaccines rolled out, Adams said, are the ones that have such a centralized system.

“I think the idea is a great one, and I’d love to see it considered more fully,” she said. “Clearly, the current system is not working. … It’s very confusing, and it’s hindering people from getting their appointments.”

The 28-year-old built her website after witnessing the “frustrating” experiences of her mother-in-law and others.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3dy5SOA