Easy vaccine distribution app: private sector helping to overcome the crisis

Estonian logistics startup Sixfold and a team of volunteers created an application to help distribute the COVID-19 vaccines to family doctors. The creators of the app helped the Estonian government and Estonian Health Insurance Fund (Haigekassa) for free as a part of a cooperation project between public and private sector.

Since the vaccine rollout and distribution was uneven, the health system struggled with distributing them all over the country in a timely manner. The previous system was built on doing everything manually by using elaborate Excel sheets and doctors being in charge of their orders. Luckily, Sixfold and its volunteers built an app in three weeks to help with the logistics of the vaccines.

The application system prepares an automatic distribution proposal for more than 700 family doctors in Estonia on the basis of the source data of vaccine deliveries arriving in the country and COVID-19 risk groups, considering the sizes of risk groups in every family doctors’ list of patients. Then, with only a few clicks, family doctors can then specify and confirm the orders and the Health Board starts to fulfil them. In addition, the application provides the family doctors with concise and clear preliminary information about their deliveries.

During the coronavirus crisis, Estonia has had a lot of help from eager IT sector volunteers before – the notification app HOIA.me (translation “Hold.us”) and website Koroonakaart.ee which displays up-to-date coronavirus data were also built by kind volunteers.

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