COVID-19 Vaccination: The Side Effect Tracker
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As of the 16th of November 2021, more than 7.52 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in 184 countries. Despite such huge figures, the vaccination of the population is at its initial stage. There are cases when people have side effects after being vaccinated, and some of them are quite severe. How can custom healthcare software, namely a side effect tracker developed in the USA, help and enable the clinicians to get all the current information in one app? We will tell you about it in this article.
Vaccination: The World Situation
Vaccination against COVID-19 is the largest planned campaign of its kind in human history. Vaccinating several billion people is no small task. Specialists all over the world are doing their best to efficiently organize the process.
The statistics of vaccinations by country show that Israel, the UAE, Chile, the UK, and the USA are the leaders; some EU countries are in the top 20. At the same time, many poorer countries have barely begun to vaccinate their citizens. According to forecasts by The Economist Intelligence Unit, the global vaccination campaign will last up to the end of 2023.
As of today, the most popular vaccines are Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna (USA), Sinopharm (China), and Sputnik V (Russia).
Vaccination in the USA
The USA leads in the total number of vaccinations against the new virus. Bloomberg reports that the number of doses administered to Americans is higher than the number of the country’s patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
People over 65, citizens with certain diseases, healthcare workers, and hospital patients were the first ones who got vaccinated. Then came clinics’ employees and pharmacists. Some states have even turned stadiums and theme parks into mass vaccination centers. The task of doctors is not only to vaccinate but also to track the side effects resulting from vaccinations.
With such an extensive process, it is difficult for healthcare facilities to control how the post-vaccination phase goes. Despite a large number of studies, the data on possible adverse reactions is still insufficient, and the list is constantly being updated. Specialists note that having side effects indicates that your body has given an immune response to the vaccine. For instance, some people experience swelling at the injection site, fever, fatigue, muscle ache, headaches, and blood clots after being injected.
How to make the vaccination procedure as safe and effective as possible? Custom healthcare software development companies come to the rescue. In the USA, the after-vaccination side effect tracker was developed, working through the V-Safe mobile app. We’d like to tell you about it.
How V-Safe Works
To get statistics on vaccinations, the USA and Japan use SmartNews. This app allows them to obtain the current information on the number of COVID-19 cases and vaccinations in real-time.
Oracle, a healthcare software development company, went a step further. Together with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, it developed the app called V-Safe for tracking symptoms after vaccinations.
After being vaccinated, every person is given a flyer with information about V-safe, where they can enter data about their condition and side effects after vaccination. The work of the app is fully compliant with the new legislation on the storage of patient data, recently adopted in the United States.
Participation in symptom tracking is voluntary. To participate, one needs to download a free app to their smartphone and register. A user enters a special code and fills in the information about their vaccination. After this, the app notifies users about the need to fill in their symptoms from time to time. A person can add information at any time and contact a doctor.
During the first post-vaccination week, the program sends you notifications several times a day. For the next five weeks, you receive the messages once a week. The app also reminds the users of the next vaccination date.
What Happens Next with the Data
A clinician keeps track of the information about side effects provided by a vaccinated person. If the side effects happen within a certain time, the person is recommended to seek medical attention.
To outline, the work of the tracker is as follows: the data of a large number of users are recorded, processed, and collected in a common database. Then, they are analyzed, and a list of the most common side effects is composed. Based on this information, scientists can draw important conclusions needed for the further development of the vaccine. The app developers guarantee the security and confidentiality of the obtained information.
Practical Benefits of a Side Effect Tracker
Despite the scale of vaccination, specialists don’t have sufficient information about possible side effects yet. They can’t safely say how often a particular adverse reaction occurs.
Using healthcare software solutions allows medical workers to carefully track after-vaccine side effects. This will not only improve the quality of people’s lives but also allow scientists to develop better medicines.
Life in the era of coronavirus poses new challenges for companies offering healthcare software development services. The apps for tracking after-vaccination symptoms are an example of a solution that is not only practical but also provides data from unprecedentedly large patient groups, improving the quality of scientists’ conclusions based on this data.