Vaccine safety has never been more important.
The rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine, the spread of misinformation on social media and mass media hype of vaccine trials have led to community concern.
An adverse event following immunisation (AEFI) is a side effect after vaccination. Some are common and pass within a few days or hours – e.g. a fever or injection site reaction (red, soreness). However, some reactions can be severe and require medical intervention to treat. Healthcare providers are required to report adverse events following immunisation that require medical intervention. These providers can include:
– Local Governments
– Pharmacies
– Commercial providers
– General practitioners (GPs)
– Medical centres
– Paramedics, and
– Hospitals
Adverse events can also be reported by vaccine recipients or guardians directly to governing safety bodies. However, the focus of this article is healthcare provider reporting.
Excessive Administration
Australia has been making moves towards improving vaccine safety monitoring and reporting throughout 2020. However, this reporting still requires excessive administration at a time when healthcare providers are already stretched.
Do hospitals, GPs or any of the other healthcare providers have the time and capacity to complete the 69 – 98 data fields required to report adverse events following immunisation?
It’s extremely important to collect this information, analyse it and make informed decisions on vaccine safety, trends and predict patterns.
Why do we still rely on manual administration forms that add to the increasing admin burden on strained healthcare providers? They are about to undertake the biggest mass vaccination campaign we have ever seen, whilst still needing to deliver their routine healthcare services.
Timeless Reporting
Moving past the excessive administration required. The next question needs to be timeliness. A question….
How long does it take to get vaccine safety information to our world-leading health experts?
Let’s take a look at the process. Below is a table broken down by:
– State and Territory
– vaccine safety governing body
– data collection method
– delivery method
– the number of fields required to be completed on the form for 1 vaccination
– the number of fields for each additional vaccine received
– risk assessment of 3 key factors – processing time, inaccurate data entry and data security
Sources:
TGA Webform | AEFI-CAN Portal form | NSW PDF Form | VIC PDF Form | QLD PDF Form | SA Webform | NT Word Document | ACT PDF Form
The current process to report an Adverse Event Following Immunisation requires a paper or web form to be completed with 69 – 98 data fields. This data includes:
– vaccine recipient information
– provider information
– vaccination information
– medical intervention data and more.
Reporting at scale
Imagine completing that form in a mass vaccination centre where you are processing 100s of people per hour. Or in an emergency department treating a vaccine recipient hours or days post-vaccination.
When is that healthcare provider going to have the capacity to enquire, find and record that information to complete the report? Then how long will it take to make it to safety governing bodies?
The latest technology can automate the collection of this reporting data, including:
– vaccine recipients information
– medical history
– provider information
– vaccine brand
– vaccine batch and dose number
– injection site
– method
This allows the healthcare provider to complete a report using this already collected information. They then complete as little as 15 data fields to capture the medical intervention provided, submit the report instantly and get back to caring for their patients.
Leveraging Technology
It’s time to leverage the power of technology to reduce the administrative burden for healthcare providers. At a time when Australia’s world-leading healthcare system is already stretched, don’t resort to old thinking of scaling manual administration to solve new problems.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of all, is that technology has developed to assess large volumes of data to identify trends, patterns and predictive analysis.
It’s time to take advantage of this technology for immunisation healthcare, to support our medical experts who assess the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and ongoing routine vaccinations.
Enough of the problems – let’s explore the solutions…
