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The critical role of data in building trust in SA’s vaccination efforts
As the African country hardest hit by the coronavirus, South Africa has been regrettably slow with its vaccine rollout, with only 12 million of its 59 million citizens having received a vaccine dose at the time of publishing this article. The vaccination of the South African population against SARS-CoV-2 is the most ambitious and far-reaching healthcare initiative in the country’s history and continues to stretch the limits of our healthcare sector writes Mervyn George, executive advisor: strategic engagements at SAP Africa.
Much has been said about the slow pace of vaccine procurement and challenges with convincing parts of the population to vaccinate – thanks in no small part to the extraordinary disinformation campaigns flourishing on social media.
However, one somewhat forgotten aspect risks being lost: the importance of data, and the protection thereof, in building trust in the process.
OPTIMAL USAGE AND PROTECTION OF PATIENT DATA
Personal health data represents a particular challenge in terms of data security as a failure to protect such data could severely harm people and expose them to discrimination.
For example, inadvertently sharing sensitive personal health data of a person living with a dread disease could affect their job prospects and livelihoods. A mix-up in personal health data could lead to someone receiving the incorrect diagnosis or, even worse, the wrong treatment. This can be lifethreatening under some circumstances.
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which was finally implemented in full force in 2020, aims to give citizens greater control over how their personal data is stored, processed and used.
While all businesses that work with private data – including that of organisations and other juristic persons – are affected, it is arguably the healthcare sector that is under most pressure due to the ongoing pandemic and the unprecedented vaccine rollout effort.
WHERE IS MY DATA ANYWAY?
The vaccine rollout in particular poses an immense challenge in terms of data security and privacy protection. Any clinic, hospital, private or public healthcare practitioner, medical aid or medicines firm needs to ensure they protect the personal healthcare data processed during the course of business.
MAJOR VACCINE PRODUCERS RUN SAP
Today, 18 of the world’s 20 major vaccine producers are already running their production on SAP solutions, which cover their end-to-end processes, from manufacturing and controlled distribution to administration and post-vaccine monitoring.
Moderna, which began shipping its COVID-19 vaccine in January, is relying on SAP to help distribute hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. The company is running digital supply chain solutions to help with serialisation and distribution.
SAP advanced track and trace for pharmaceuticals is helping Moderna to comply with international legislation intended to prevent counterfeit drugs from reaching patients. The application provides a corporate serialisation repository, serial number management and regulatory reporting capabilities.
Similar tools are in use at AstraZeneca, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, all of which are working on COVID-19 vaccines. Here are just a few examples:
• Over 90% of global revenue from GSK’s pharmaceutical and vaccine businesses is managed with SAP software, enabling the company to leverage the data it collects and develop insights from that information to improve operations. GSK also uses SAP Ariba to help procure the raw materials that make up its vaccine formulas.
• AstraZeneca uses SAP Work Manager to oversee its manufacturing equipment and help managers predict when machines require maintenance. This has resulted in a 6% to 8% increase in worker efficiency, according to Michael Zboray, lead business analyst at AstraZeneca.
• Sanofi, a French drug manufacturer, introduced SAP S/4HANA in 2017 to help standardise and harmonise processes, support the development of standard solutions and improve efficiency.
While government has taken steps to centralise the scheduling and rollout of vaccinations via its electronic vaccination data system (EVDS) portal and requires that all citizens wishing to be vaccinated register on EVDS. The intention is that, as each population group (over-60s, teachers, healthcare workers, etc.) registers, each person receives communication with the time, date and location of their scheduled vaccination appointment.
However, the system is often unreliable, and many people simply get no confirmation of where they need to go or when. There is also little communication over the status of an application for vaccination.
Compounding the problem is that actual vaccination sites are run by a combination of public and private sector organisations, and in many cases are open to walk-ins who may not have received confirmation of their appointments.
How is the data of walk-ins, for example, collected, stored, processed and managed? Who is overseeing the full end-to-end process to ensure it is fully POPIA compliant? In the case of manual data entries, how is quality maintained to ensure data integrity? And how is this data secured from the rising tide of cyberattacks besieging South African organisations?
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
Public and private sector healthcare organisations should lean heavily on technology to assist with both the protection of vaccine patient data as well as better supporting the end-to-end vaccination process.
A patient experience management tool can give healthcare decision-makers insights into underperforming or misaligned aspects of the vaccination process – for example, insufficient communication around vaccination appointments – and help ensure a seamless process from start to finish.
A cloud-based analytics tool can help integrate healthcare data from public and private sector role-players and highlight critical insights that can point to trends, risks, opportunities and areas for improvement while maintaining data integrity throughout. Equipped with accurate and complete data, government and other decision-makers will be able to determine the most effective healthcare response and potentially save lives.
In addition, any vaccine rollout strategy should include a comprehensive customer data strategy, which helps to safeguard the longevity of each organisation involved in the vaccination value chain. Such a strategy should include relevant digital platforms that can ease or enable the process of managing patient profiles and help manage access and authorisation to systems that provide selfservice options for activities such as booking vaccination appointments or tests.
In terms of POPIA compliance, all organisations should have taken steps by now to ensure they meet the requirements of the Act, especially since the grace period for sanction and fines for non-compliance expired at the end of June. Implementing an effective cloud-based customer relationship management tool enables healthcare providers to have a unified view of each vaccinated patient and gives them the power to limit how that information is used or even delete it (in line with the requirements of POPIA) if needed.
Critically, the customer data strategy should provide individuals with the power of consent to subscribe or unsubscribe to correspondence, manage their preferences for ongoing communication, and afford them the right to be forgotten. •
Mervyn George
SAP – www.sap.com
