AN innovative digital platform developed to manage the Barwon South West’s COVID-19 vaccination appointments has been recognised with Australia’s Best Health Project at the IT News Benchmark Awards.
Vaccine management system CoVaxApp won the national recognition after being rapidly developed and launched in February 2021 to support Barwon Health’s COVID-19 vaccination rollout for the Geelong region and south-west Victoria.
The platform, a partnership with developer Circle T, supported on-site vaccination processes, reporting of patient outcomes and online bookings between February and July 2021, when it was phased out to integrate with the system used by the rest of Victoria’s health services.
Barwon Health information and analytics director Matt Morris said without the quick development of CoVaxApp, the vaccination program would have faced the limitations of a paper-based system.
“We’re very proud of this project’s success and we’re pleased to see it recognised with a national IT award,” he said.
“The launch of our vaccine rollout wouldn’t have been as effective as it was, and we wouldn’t have reached such high vaccination rates so quickly, without this platform,” he said.
“More than 140,000 doses were delivered through the CoVaxApp system, and it supported between 5000 and 10,000 bookings a day.”
Infectious Diseases director Associate Professor Daniel O’Brien said the platform was a huge help to health services in Barwon South West’s rural communities.
“At peak times, we were able to vaccinate up to 3000 people each day, across 50 sites and vaccination centres, which allowed our regional healthcare immunisation teams to work as efficiently as possible,” he said.
Mr Morris said due to the project’s success, Barwon Health had incorporated a number of its capabilities into other IT processes, including platforms and governance models.
