Salesforce Debuts COVID Vaccine Distribution Through Work.com

Need to Know

• The new extension within Work.com will help local, state, and federal governments monitor and manage COVID-19 vaccine programs.
• Salesforce will track dosage, inventory, syringe supply, and refrigeration capacity, among other data sets.
• Scheduling and patient monitoring will allow governments to administer vaccines and track self-reported health outcomes from those who have received the vaccine.
• Salesforce launched its COVID-19 return-to-work suite in Work.com in June.

Analysis

Salesforce has launched a new tool for vaccine monitoring and management within its COVID-19 suite, which can be used by governments at all levels once a coronavirus is released.

The new function is designed to get ahead of vaccine distribution; there are no COVID-19 vaccines currently available, but Salesforce is aiming to make scheduling, monitoring, and other administrative tasks associated with an eventual vaccine streamlined and seamless for governments at local, state, and federal levels.

According to Bill Patterson, vice president of CRM applications at Salesforce, the new vaccine function will allow governments to “track inventory, refrigeration states and data elements.”

“It’s an opportunity to modernize bespoke systems,” he continued, adding that Salesforce aims to solve for the challenge of connecting systems, tracking vaccine appointments, and analyzing wellness data when it comes to vaccine administration.

“It’s important to use an open data platform that allows for aggregate data to be quickly summarized and abstracted for public use,” he said. Some US states are already using Tableau, which Salesforce bought in 2019, to track COVID data. “We want to do the same kind of exchange of data with things like inventory management (for a vaccine),” Patterson said.

Among the tools to be made available within Work.com’s COVID-19 vaccine monitoring and management function will be a public health command center, which will provide data points for vaccine management such as demographics, inventory levels, and forecasting; inventory management, which will manage doses, syringes, and protective gear; clinical vaccine administration and clinical scheduling tools, which will include electronic consent forms; and patient outcomes monitoring, to capture and store self-reported health outcomes following vaccination.

Salesforce is just the latest company to announce its intention to support an eventual COVID-19 vaccine with its technology. Earlier this month, FedEx announced that it would be launching real-time tracking with SenseAware ID, a small tracking device affixed to packages, for future COVID-19 vaccine shipments. The shipping company has been using SenseAware to safely transport COVID-19 test specimens since March.