A team at Windsor Regional Hospital has developed an innovative tool to eliminate the possibility of human error in administrating the Pfizer vaccine.
According to the hospital, managing the highly sensitive vaccine requires a complex equation with moving variables such as the amount of doses on hand, the number of people being vaccinated on any given day plus future shipments.
Kurt Lucas is a decision support analyst at the hospital and played a major role in developing the tool. He tells AM800 News the tool allows the leadership team to access the up-to-date vaccine inventory and better forecast.
"We tried to take a process that's very complex with the number of moving parts and we tried to make it simple," he says. "So it incorporates a lot of different factors because we're looking form dozens of different healthcare organizations and long-term care homes in the region"
Lucas says they're trying to balance the fine line between vaccinating as many people as possible while always making sure there is enough vaccine on hand for people's second doses.
"This has been especially important recently just because of the rapidly changing environment that this process has become," he adds. "Having this information handy is very important."
Tool has been in use for about two weeks at Windsor Regional Hospital and Lucas says feedback so far from management and pharmacy staff has been great.
"We've actually learned too that Southlake Hospital in the Toronto region has been using it as well and apparently they found it to be quite useful, too," he says. "So it's nice to know we're helping out,"
Lucas also points out the motivation behind the development of the tracking tool was the hard work done by everyone who is part of the vaccine program to ensure proper management of the vaccine, to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Windsor Regional Hospital has been vaccinating 500 people a day focusing on priority groups set by the Province.