Fort Wayne Tech Firm Helping Guide COVID Vaccine Use
(photo courtesy: Northwell Health)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA Fort Wayne-based health technology company helped the largest health system in New York to administer the very first dose of the COVID-19 vaccination in the country.
Enterprise Health developed and manages occupational and employee health software used by health systems, corporations and government agencies.
Northwell Health, which operates 23 hospitals in the state of New York, uses the technology. The east coast health system says it is using the software to document and manage the administration of the vaccine among its staff, including the first healthcare worker in the U.S. to receive the shot.
The health system says it was a daunting task to determine who would receive the Pfizer vaccine or when vials of the treatment would arrive.
Enterprise says it worked with Northwell, and its other clients, to configure a vaccine protocol, which includes drug administration guidelines, consent forms and immunization registries.
“We didn’t know vaccine release dates, whether we would receive vaccines from a single or multiple manufacturers, if the vaccines would be single or multi-dose, how many doses we would receive, or what the demand would be from our employees,” Dana Flitsch, senior manager, product services & management, human resources technology at Northwell Health.
The IT company says it was able to develop a COVID-19 vaccination workflow largely based on existing functionality used to manage large-scale employee events.
Northwell says the software is allowing it to manage, prioritize, and track who receives the vaccine among its staff of 74,000 workers, as the treatment becomes available.
“If we were in the same position as we were in April, where we were building homegrown databases to track all of this, I don’t think we could have ever gotten where we are at such lightning speed to be ready to start vaccinating,” said Flitsch. “I can’t emphasize enough how having the right IT technology can spring you forward in getting this done.”