In a partnership with Dimagi, UNICEF and the Private Sector Vaccine Initiative (PSVI), the Government of Jamaica has rapidly launched a digital system to manage COVID-19 vaccine delivery across the country using CommCare.
After rapid iterations, more than 1,000 users across Jamaica have been trained to use the system, including medical officers, public health nurses, and community health agents. The solution assists vaccinators and vaccine recipients before, during, and after the delivery of a full course of the COVID-19 vaccine. The application is used by vaccinators to screen vaccine recipients for eligibility, record the delivery of multiple doses, and record adverse events.
“Using the tablet saves me a lot of time – it’s about three times faster than the paper register. If someone has been vaccinated at another site, or they have lost their vaccination card, I can just pull up all the information on the tablet. Everything is quicker and more accurate.”
Yonique Malcolm, Community Health Worker, Jamaica Ministry of Health and Wellness
The system has been rolled out nationally and used to record more than 300,000 vaccine doses.
CommCare has been integrated with Jamaica’s national COVID-19 vaccine scheduler so potential recipients can be pre-registered in the platform to allow for a seamless and efficient process once they arrive for their appointments.
A real-time view of the campaign
Data collected through the application is fed into a dashboard that visualizes various elements of the vaccine campaign, including detail used to monitor vaccine delivery, track rates of missed appointments and lost-to-follow-ups, and ensure that priority segments are vaccinated first. The dashboard is updated in real time as data is collected, so decision making is empowered with the most up-to-date detail on what’s happening on the ground.
A national launch
Jamaica Minister of Health and Wellness Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton shared some preliminary remarks about the system during a virtual ceremony to officially launch the system on Monday, June 14. In his speech, he shared that implementing CommCare for vaccine delivery has been “one of the most significant digitization of our public health records in our history as an independent country, and a good initiation of what technology can do for public health.”
Minister Tufton also kindly invited others to look at the progress of Jamaica in implementing the COVID-19 CommCare software. “We’re more than happy to invite you to come and look at what we’ve done here so that you can go and do it elsewhere.”
“They’ve demonstrated that with the right investment, digital solutions can be rapidly scaled and provide immediate value from the front line all the way to the central level.”
Jonathan Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, Dimagi
Dimagi’s Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Jackson shared positive sentiments about the work in Jamaica. “It’s been incredibly heartening to see the Ministry of Health and Wellness’ commitment to digitizing in the face of this unprecedented vaccine campaign.”
Jonathan continued, “We are grateful to UNICEF, PSVI, and the MOHW for their partnership and for bringing us in to support during this momentous public health event. With CommCare now scaled nationally, we look forward to continuing our partnership and exploring how we can provide further value to frontline health workers across the country.”
Lessons learned
In an effort to share lessons learned while deploying and scaling the system, UNICEF has compiled a case study available for download.
For UNICEF Jamaica’s own account of the rollout, see the original article, Managing Jamaica’s COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Digitally (Naina Ahuja, UNICEF Jamaica, July 2021).
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