HSS helping Western Australians get vaccinated
Congratulations to the HSS VaccinateWA project team who have been hard at work leading the development and launch of the VaccinateWA registration and online booking system to the general public.
This milestone is a major step forward in enabling more Western Australians in the community to book and receive their COVID-19 vaccine.
The project team, comprising representatives from ICT, Transformation and Strategy, Procurement and Supply and Customer Experience, have been working with the Department of Health and the Department of Premier and Cabinet since December 2020 to create an end-to-end solution to manage vaccine inventory, record vaccine administration and track registration and bookings.
Following the initial release of the VaccinateWA system in February this year as part of WA’s COVID-19 vaccination program for Phase 1a (and later 1b) cohorts, the team have been focused on enhancing the solution that can be used as a public online booking system for community and hospital-based vaccination clinics.
HSS Executive Director, COVID-19 Response Ralph Bates said this was an incredible achievement and a testament to the hard work and dedication of multiple teams across HSS.
“Many of us have been working tirelessly including late nights and weekends to develop a system that works seamlessly and can cope with the demand from the community,” Ralph said.
“This has been a significant challenge because, apart from SafeWA, HSS is used to developing applications only for use within the WA health system.”
The public launch of the VaccinateWA booking system features improved functions and provides a more user-friendly booking and registration system.
Eligible people can easily register and book-in for their COVID vaccine, with information about their completed vaccinations automatically uploaded to the Australian Immunisation’s Register.
A key function is a smart registration and booking system that determines a person’s eligibility and the preferred vaccine for the recipient. This enables the system to automatically notify a person once they become eligible to book their appointment as the state’s vaccination program is expanded to more groups.
When VaccinateWA went live publicly on 25 May, more than 6700 registrations were made by the end of the first day.
Monitoring of the system found it was able to cope with the demand and operating without any issues. Feedback from the clinics regarding the new functionality have also been positive.
HSS VaccinateWA Program Director Luella Forbes said that it has been a great example of the HSS values in action.
“We promise, we own, we do, and we will find a way was our approach throughout this project. Luella said.
“We made a commitment to have the system available to the public by 25 May, and despite having to adapt to changing requirements, timelines and business priorities, we were able to live up to our promise thanks to the impressive work by the team.”
The system was recently enhanced to enable Western Australians aged between 30 and 49 to register and book their COVID-19 vaccination.
Always working a step ahead, the team are now working on the next two upgrades to continue improving the system.
Since launching in February, VaccinateWA has enabled more than 204,428 vaccinations to be administered against COVID-19!