Massachusetts mom creates Covid-19 vaccine website for easier registration



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Olivia Adams has built a website that brings together immunization appointments from across the state, including government sites as well as those run by private companies. She called it macovidvaccines.com.
The 28-year-old software developer from Arlington, Mass. Says she spent three weeks and around 40 hours building the website – and she did so while on maternity leave to care for her. 2-month-old son, she told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. Monday.

“I thought I would take a look and was surprised at how decentralized everything was and how there were a thousand different websites to go to,” Adams said. “I thought, ‘How can I use my software skills to improve this in my spare time?’

Free time usually came when her newborn was sleeping, Adams said. She said her 2 year old son is in daycare so she is lucky not to take care of both during the day.

The inspiration came after listening to her stepmom, who struggled to sign up for a date. Her mother-in-law is a dental hygienist who qualified for the first phase of vaccinations, she said.

“She had a little trouble figuring out where to go and how to register,” Adams said. “She was able to do it, but it took a little while, and then she had the same problem when she was able to enroll her dad when he became eligible at the start of our phase two.

Her family is not alone in their struggles to register for the vaccine. Across the country, from the elderly to others in the early stages of immunization, people had to wait hours on the phone and go online to see no spots available.
Adams took a look at the Massachusetts online vaccine portal and saw that it could make it better for everyone. She said she was used to creating complicated software related to healthcare needs in her job as a senior technical staff member at Athenahealth, a healthcare technology company.

But, she has never created a website like this.

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“It was my first time creating a complicated website on my own,” she said. “The hardest part about it is that every website that has free / busy information has to tell my computer how to read that website like a human. That’s where all the working hours happened.”

Vaccine appointments are available at a number of sites, from those run by the state to those administered at grocery stores and pharmacies. Analyzing all this information for each vendor is where it takes a little bit of time, she said.

Adams has a script that runs every five minutes at about 20 different vaccination sites, she wrote in an email.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker was asked about Adams’s vaccine website at a press conference on Friday. “Send us his name, we’ll talk to him,” Baker said on Friday.

Adams said she contacted the state to discuss her website before the press conference, but did not get a response after emailing them. Monday, she tweeted that she received an email from the state’s coronavirus control center and will try to meet with them this week.

CNN has contacted the state for comment but has not received a response.

Olivia Adams created the website primarily when her newborn son was sleeping.

Adams said she never expected her website to take off with such popularity. She sent the link to her friends and family and it spread from there.

For people wondering if Adams could use her code magic for other states in need of help registering for immunizations, Adams said she realizes there is a great need.

“Friday, I would have told you, absolutely not,” she said. “There is no way I have the time to do it, but now the support has just been overwhelming and there is clearly such a need. I already have people from other states who have me emailed me asking if it can be done where they are at. I ” I’d love to explore that and we’ll see how it goes.

Adams encourages others who may have an idea to help try it out, she wrote over the email.

“I encourage anyone who thinks they have a half-baked idea to go ahead and they will be surprised at how well this turns out,” she wrote. “I built it for everyone but I didn’t think everyone would use it.”



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