Crowd control

African countries are betting on a cloud-based health-management system to track COVID-19 immunisation programmes once a vaccine is ready.

The Oracle Health Management System was created by global cloud technology company Oracle in partnership with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. It will monitor patient symptoms, testing and responses to treatments. Once a COVID-19 vaccine is available, the platform will not only track vaccinations, but also provide recipients with a digital quick response (QR) code, which will serve as a safe-to-travel ticket across African borders. According to the UN Brief, the US government is using it to monitor COVID-19 patient symptoms, responses to treatments and to screen volunteers for clinical trials of vaccines.

The system has already been launched in Ghana, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Ghana is using it to manage yellow-fever vaccinations, while Rwanda and Sierra Leone are preparing to use it for, respectively, HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccinations and a routine immunisation programme for childhood diseases such as polio and measles. They will use this experience to roll out the system for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Countries signed up to the system will have free access to Oracle’s cloud services for 10 years.