Mumbai to get mobile app, vaccine dashboard for Covid vaccine

In a bid to improve the experience of Covid vaccination in the city, Mumbai civic body plans to develop a web portal-based vaccination dashboard on the lines of its Covid-19 management dashboard along with a mobile application which will help citizens get information on vaccination in the city

In a bid to improve the experience of Covid vaccination in the city, Mumbai civic body plans to develop a web portal-based vaccination dashboard on the lines of its Covid-19 management dashboard along with a mobile application which will help citizens get information on vaccination in the city. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) also plans to develop a web portal-based chat bot where citizens can get answers to their queries about vaccines.

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However, citizens will not be able to book appointment for vaccination using the dashboard or the mobile application. Registration and booking of appointments for vaccination will continue to be done on the CoWIN app.

According to BMC officials, this plan is similar to its Covid-19 dashboard that is available online for citizens to understand the spread of the virus in the city along with analytical data. For details on vaccination, they are going to develop a mobile application. BMC officials said the app and web portal will help citizens in getting details on vaccine availability, vaccine consumption pattern, adverse effects count etc. The information will also be made in such a way that citizens will be able to share it via social media platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook.

BMC has already floated bids for the same and the system is expected to go live next month, if all goes as per the plan, civic officials said.

The bid document floated by BMC reads, “In order improve citizen experience of getting inoculated, BMC is looking for an application, which will work with close integration with Government of India’s CoWIN application, for vaccination programme management in Mumbai city, primarily focusing on helping efficient logistics for the vaccination drive in the city and transparently sharing real-time vaccination-related information with various stakeholders and citizens.”

According to the bid document, features of the mobile app and dashboard will include inventory tracking, centres where vaccination is out of stock, daily consumption, among others. The app will also send notifications to the administration via SMS about changing consumption patterns of vaccine in the city.

Dr Managala Gomare, head of BMC’s public health department, said, “We are planning to come up with vaccine dashboard like our Covid dashboard. However, in this dashboard, the information displayed for the administration and the citizens will be divided. Few details displayed will be useful for citizens, whereas the information requirement of the administration might vary.”

Suresh Kakani, additional commissioner BMC, said, “We will have the option of both web-based dashboard giving vaccination information and a mobile application. However, both of these will only be for information and not booking of appointment or registration. Citizens will have to continue using CoWIN for registration and booking vaccine appointments.”

He added, “In the coming days, we plan to have more vaccine doses by importing from international bidders. The bidding process is on and once we get more vaccine doses, the vaccination drive will get scaled up and the use of these features will be useful at that time.”

After receiving additional doses from the international market, BMC plans to take up the vaccination drive aggressively by starting mobile vaccination centres in the city apart from the current over 300 vaccination centres.

BMC had, on May 12, floated global expression of interest for procuring 10 million vaccine doses from the international market. Around three parties have expressed their interest for supplying Russia’s Sputnik vaccine to the city. The last day for submitting proposals is Tuesday.

Meanwhile, as of Saturday, 2,955,267 citizens have been vaccinated in the city, of which 80,077 are aged between 18 and 44, 1,045,005 are from the 45-59 age group, 1,172,755 are senior citizens and the remaining are healthcare and frontline workers.