Background

Why vaccine appointment finders boost getting shots into arms.

We are at an inflection point with vaccine supply <> demand dynamics: by mid-April, 90% of remaining adults are eligible to receive the vaccine. Most local communities–especially those underserved–still will not have enough vaccine supply on hand to accommodate the imminent surge in demand from their eligible residents.

Many jurisdictions are eager make it easier for people to find an available appointment to get vaccinated. Due to the general lack of a centralized platform where residents can find and secure vaccination appointment, finding an appointment for them often means navigating dozens and dozens of different websites and call centers, with multiple rounds of clicks and calls.

To alleviate this understandable frustration residents experience with this fragmented process, we at U.S. Digital Response (USDR) have been partnering with governments to stand up Vaccine Appointment Finders (VAFs), which programmatically aggregate appointment availability from decentralized vaccine provider appointment sites, and surface this information dynamically on updated platform. This enables people to look for appointments in a more streamlined, less frustrating way.

Given that vaccine appointment finders' ultimate goal is helping your constituents secure appointments, it’s important to note what VAFs do and don’t do:

How VAFs Help Your Residents

Vaccine appointment finders dynamically search disparate providers' appointment websites, on frequent intervals (e.g. every 10 minutes), and then show those on a single platform (e.g. website). At that point, users can click on a link and be taken to the site with the available appointment, or call a phone number to schedule one.

Caveats

A vaccine appointment finder's platform will not allow residents to make an appointment directly on it: instead, the VAF re-routes residents to the right providers that do actually have appointment availability, closeby and at that time.

Also, given how quickly appointments are–and will continue to be–filled within mere minutes due to exponentially high demand, it is possible that an appointment could be shown as available, but, once a resident goes through the providers' appointment booking flow attempt, the original appointment slot is taken by another resident. This so commonly happens, whether or not you have a VAF.

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