This is a familiar sight for so many of you.
A nurse dressed in PPE delivering a community immunisation session.
This is the new “COVID normal” for immunisation teams as they deliver lifesaving vaccination programs to reduce the spread of infectious diseases like Measles and Polio.
VaxApp’s story begins with the incredible woman in this photo, Jan.
Jan has been an Immunisation nurse, in Local Governments across Victoria, for over 25 years.
She was a founding committee member of INSIG (Immunisation Nurses Special Interest Group) and a researcher with VIRGo (Vaccine and Immunisation Research Group).
But the most awesome thing about Jan is that she is my Mum.
On the 4th of April 2020, I was in my last day of quarantine in Melbourne.
I had just returned from 5 years in Europe, as COVID-19 began to spread across the globe. Mum called me. She told me about the social distancing challenges of community immunisation sessions. The large waiting rooms could have wait times of 30 minutes to over an hour.
Mum continued to tell me about the extensive face-time required for nurses to brief clients and administer the vaccines. As well as time for the administration team to record client information and vaccination details.
This close contact posed a huge risk for COVID-19 transmission. Not only was my mum at huge risk every day at work. If she bought COVID-19 home, my dad was as well.
With COVID-19 beginning to spread, I had to find a way to protect my family.
The idea for VaxApp was born
Now you are probably thinking, what does this guy actually know about immunisation?
How could he solve any of these problems?
Like most children of Immunisers, for the last 30 years mum jabbed me with whatever she could get her hands on. Influenza, Meningococcal ACWY and everything in between.
I grew up around community immunisation sessions.
I remember when Local Governments used to carry wooden boxes with paper consent cards and vaccination records for everyone in their local community. Over the years I have absorbed so much, in passing, from asking mum how her day was, that I basically became a walking immunisation handbook! And, of course, every year when I came home from Europe for Christmas I was not allowed to leave without a flu jab from one of her community sessions.
The delivery of immunisation has hardly changed in 25 years.
Paper consent cards are still commonly used by Immunisation Providers, for Community Sessions and School programs. This requires huge volumes of manual data entry into outdated systems. This leads to slow reporting to program coordinators, State and Territory Departments of Health, vaccine safety bodies (TGA, SAEFVIC, WAVVS etc) and the Australian Department of Health.
It’s time to improve immunisation for vital preventative healthcare
I have a background in technology systems, marketing and operational process design.
Within 72 hours of getting the idea, I had 4 products mapped out – VaxApp for Community Sessions, School Programs, Workplace Immunisation and Pandemics. Basic mock-ups for user interfaces (UI) and user experience (UX) were ready to be developed.
For VaxApp to succeed I needed to find the right people.
I spent the next 4 weeks building a team from product development to legal, finance to operations, marketing to medical advisory.
On the 4th of May we kicked off development and, as I write this post 9 months later we:
have developed the world’s first immunisation eligibility engine to assess who should have what vaccine and when they are eligible to receive it. This eligibility engine assesses over 30 client data points to automate manual administration including allocating batch numbers, prefilling dose numbers from client history and automation of reminders to return to the immunisation provider.
are the first cloud based, Immunisation Management Platform to integrate with the Australian Immunisation Register and Services Australia’s new PRODA (provider digital authentication).
VaxApp has grown to a suite of products
Over the past 9 months, VaxApp has grown to a suite of 20 products, in development to support Immunisation Providers to:
- save time
- increase capacity to vaccinate more clients
- reduce manual administration
- monitor vaccine safety
- improve client experience
- manage online bookings
- reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission during vaccinations
- increase revenue to decrease the cost of vaccination delivery
- provide real-time reporting of immunisation programs and vaccine safety
The impact we want to make in the world is even greater
Our Mission
We are on a mission to prevent infectious disease. Through our technology, we improve immunisation services and support the essential healthcare teams that deliver vaccinations around the world.
Our Goal
Our goal is to support the delivery of 1 billion vaccinations by 2030 across the globe. This is our pledge towards the UN Global goal 3.3 to fight communicable diseases.
In February my family lost the biggest, yet smallest, part of our family.
In February 2020, we lost my Nan, June, or as I called her Shorty. This incredible woman impacted so many people in such a positive way. And now, through VaxApp, I want to continue that positive impact. Our big game is to launch the Shorty Foundation, funded by our VaxApp products. The Shorty Foundation will support: Local immunisation programs in Australia and every country we launch into for groups that have difficulty accessing preventative health care such as the homeless. International programs in countries such as Samoa that were devastated in late 2019 by a measles outbreaks. Education support, for Immunisation healthcare – supporting nurses with scholarships and work placements.
I’m really excited for what the future holds. Not only to protect my family but millions more around the world.
There is a team of 20 who have been working tirelessly to bring this vision to life. I want to thank them for all their hard work and support over the last 9 months.
This is just the beginning… the VaxApp story is to be continued
