Yet spend any amount of time in one of the many ad-hoc Facebook groups where volunteers are helping eligible vaccine recipients book appointments, and it becomes clear that actually getting a shot remains a challenge for many—especially people who are less tech-savvy, less connected, or simply less able to spend hours on end refreshing websites in the hunt for a slot. Meanwhile, no-shows are a problem for vaccine providers: if somebody books a vaccine appointment but doesn’t show up—perhaps because they booked multiple appointments and forgot to cancel their extras—a dose could go to waste (since all doses in a vial must be administered within a certain amount of time after the vial is punctured), or at least be given to someone who doesn’t yet qualify.
Dr. B, an online vaccine standby list that quietly launched in January, aims to help solve both problems. Users enter their name, contact information and other details related to their vaccination priority ranking, like their occupation and medical risk factors. If a vaccine provider partnering with Dr. B has an extra dose, the platform sends a text message to nearby users based on their prioritization as set by their state or other jurisdiction. Users then have a limited window of time to claim that dose and get to the provider for their shot.
“We thought there needed to be a nationwide standby system where any vaccine provider who has excess doses indicates how many vaccines are available, and immediately it goes out to the appropriately-prioritized people based on local government priority criteria,” says Dr. B founder Cyrus Massoumi, a technology executive and investor best known as the founder and former CEO of medical appointment-booking site Zocdoc. Massoumi says he’s self-funding Dr. B, which is free for both vaccine recipients and providers.
At the moment, demand for Dr. B’s offering is clearly outstripping supply. More than half a million people have signed up for the service, but only two pilot providers are currently on board: one in New York and another in Arkansas. However, Massoumi says more than 200 other providers across 30 states have expressed interest. “They range everywhere from individual pharmacies in rural settings to homeless shelters, academic medical centers, you name it—it’s a pretty representative set of who’s actually giving the vaccine,” says Massoumi, though he declined to say how many people have been vaccinated so far via Dr. B. “It’s still early innings…we’re just trying to get every site up and running as quickly as we can.” While vaccination sites often have their own manually-run standby lists, there are obvious advantages to having a more universal tool, with more automated processes—Massoumi’s team is working on a way to occasionally ask registrants if they have already gotten their shot through other means, so they can trim the list and improve efficiency, for instance.
by Alex Fitzpatrick, Time | Read more:
Image: Dr B
[ed. Worth a try. More providers soon, so get on the list as early as possible. Dr B site here.]
