How Governments Can Use Data to Power Vaccine Management

State and local government leaders have used data to help them manage the COVID-19 response since the start of the pandemic. Analytics and visualization technologies provide tools for implementing safety measures, directing resources, softening the pandemic’s economic impact, monitoring progress and keeping the public informed.

Now, the U.S. has embarked on the next step in the battle against COVID, vaccination. The vaccine rollout poses immense challenges, as a look at any day’s headlines will show. Many locations have seen mismatches in supply and demand: Some must discard unused vaccines while others run out and turn people away. Some citizens who want vaccines struggle to make appointments, while other citizens avoid the shots because they doubt the vaccine is safe.

Much as they transformed data into dashboards and reports to gain actionable insights in the pandemic’s earlier stages, governments can now use data analytics and visualization to help them roll out vaccination programs efficiently and effectively.

These technologies can help can help public health agencies improve their COVID vaccination programs in a variety of ways. Here are some examples:

Supply management: By analyzing demographic data for different parts of their jurisdictions, governments can forecast how much vaccine inventory they need at different sites. For instance, which neighborhoods have heavy concentrations of frontline workers or senior citizens? As they track consumption, health agencies can identify locations with shortages or surpluses, gaining insight into how to rebalance inventory. Governments can also forecast how many doses they will need in the future and how long new supplies will take to arrive, letting them target deliveries to meet local needs at each site.

Site management: As states opened their vaccination programs, not all sites became ready at the same rate to receive, store and administer the shots. An application powered by data analytics can help a government monitor site readiness, with details such as how many vaccine stations each facility has, how much storage volume is available for equipment and how much refrigerated shelf space (if needed) there is for vaccine inventory. By viewing this information in the aggregate, by county or by individual facility, officials can develop plans to help more sites get ready.

Registration: With millions of people competing for limited appointments, often on quickly built and non-integrated systems, many citizens have a hard time securing appointments for their shots. A well-designed registration system built on data analytics technology can vastly improve the citizen experience. With the right tools, people can search for vaccination sites with available appointments, choosing sites based on factors such as location, average wait times and proximity to public transit — all easily visualized on a map display. The platform could also provide information on how to make appointments and maybe even include tools for making appointments online.

Population prioritization: Each state has set its own priorities to determine who will be vaccinated and in what order. Whatever order a state establishes, it’s important to know how many people belong to each tier and where they live, as an aide in vaccine supply management. States also need to track their progress toward vaccination targets for each tier, rebalancing vaccine distribution as needed. Data analytics through a geographic lens can help a state take a tactical approach to its priorities. For example, if one neighborhood suffers an outbreak, the state can flood that area with vaccines and assign extra staff there in an effort to immunize as many people as possible.

Communications and outreach: The public is extremely interested in the progress of the fight against COVID-19. Some states receives a million views or more per day on their coronavirus dashboards. Now that vaccine programs are in full swing, citizens are eager to monitor that effort along with infection rates and other statistics. A vaccine program dashboard powered by data analytics can provide a command center-style perspective on a state’s success against COVID-19. On any day, citizens can use it to learn how many vaccines have been administered, how many people have upcoming appointments, how many have come back for a second dose if required, how close the state is to reaching its vaccination targets and a great deal more. Users can view this information on a map and drill down to see the numbers by county or other jurisdiction. A state could also provide information on adverse reactions, such as how many people just felt a bit of soreness at the injection site and how many suffered several days of fever. Texas and Indiana are among the states that have public-facing vaccination dashboards.

Adverse effects surveillance: Members of the public awaiting their appointments aren’t the only people who want to know about vaccine side effects. Data analytics can answer many important questions about adverse reactions for public health officials. For example, do people with certain pre-existing conditions tend to have severe reactions? If data shows that smokers or people with high blood pressure are especially likely to experience adverse effects, public health workers can make a special effort to keep an eye on such people after their injections. If the data shows that many people had severe pain at the injection site on certain days, perhaps one of the workers giving injections needs extra training. Data could also show patterns of adverse reaction for certain age groups, genders, races or ethnicities. The more public health officials know about who experiences what kinds of reactions, the more proactive they can be about mitigating that problem.

With lives and livelihoods at stake, governments urgently need to administer as many COVID vaccines as they can, as soon as they can. Fortunately, public health agencies possess a great deal of data they can harness to enhance their success. Data analytics and visualization can help state and local governments transform data into the insights required to plan, execute and continually improve every aspect of a COVID vaccination program.

To learn more about how to put data to work in your vaccination program, visit https://www.tableau.com/covid-19/vaccine-management.