Why COVID-19 vaccine data needs to be real-time
Monitoring the vaccine rollout, Sky News added a doses ticker, alongside the usual FTSE shares index, reflecting how many people the vaccine jab has been administered to.
These two pieces of information on constant display – the vaccine ticker and the FTSE index – are very different in nature. The FTSE index continually updates as trading activity takes place throughout the day. While not all the changes will be shown, it has the potential to update thousands of times in a single second. The underlying data behind the ticker can therefore be described as “real-time”.
The jabs number, though, will remain the same for hours. In fact, it will be refreshed only once a day, in the morning; so the closer we get to the end of the day, the more outdated the number is.
But what if it did update more regularly and closer to real-time? What would that represent and why is that useful?
A real-time, event-driven flow of data would enable us to have:
Better insight to improve deployment speed by identifying trends and areas for process improvement
Earlier reaction to issues for faster decision-making, creating more “actionable” intelligence.
Being Event-Driven = Better Insight and Vaccine Deployment Improvements
Without inside knowledge of the government’s IT systems, an educated guess would be that they rely on batch processing. This is a traditional, and still very common, form of computing where things execute, or information is exchanged, periodically, usually on a set schedule.
One major drawback of a once-a-day batch processing approach is the granular detail about the vaccine administration progress within the day is lost.
To turn insight into action the government may look to identify and remove the obstacles that hinder the flow of jabs, like logistical issues around vaccine delivery or the ability for patients to be booked in for appointments.
Imagine what further insight and process improvement could be gained if the progress information was available by the hour or minute.
Being Event-Driven = Faster Reactions, Faster Decision Making
To explain a little more now on what being “event-driven” means: it is a way of describing and delivering the data that flows through an organisation’s IT systems, the key difference being that there is a new immediacy or “real-time” nature to it.
In the context of this vaccine delivery, NHS England reports there are close to 1800 vaccine delivery sites as of April 2, 2021. In the older method of ‘batch processing,’ each of these sites would operate in isolation to record and track vaccine delivery progress. Then at some interval, each centre makes their data available to a central place so it can be merged together to build the nation-wide view.
When operating in a new event-driven manner instead of waiting to report on the vaccination progress – by means of a large spreadsheet, for example – the event is created and sent as it takes place.
The event in this case would not just tell you the vaccination took place, but could contain other necessary details without compromising any personally-identifiable information (PII). Details such as the priority group the patient was in, vaccine centre it took place, time of vaccination, etc.
Taking the event-driven approach further, the government would be in a position to build a real-time view of all the moving parts that make up the vaccine delivery chain today. For instance, it can know instantly if there are any delays in import or transportation to be able to react and adapt accordingly.
To borrow a phrase from the military, these events become “actionable intel” due to their real-time nature.
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