Signetic Outreach Dashboard: One Way to Improve Vaccination Efforts

It was April 28, 2021. That’s the date when demand for Covid-19 vaccinations dropped off sharply. Overall traffic to Signetic’s Seattle registration site—which handled requests for the largest civilian-run vaccination site in the United States, in addition to several smaller sites throughout the city—nose-dived, and appointment registrations quickly followed suit.

This is consistent with national data. From McKinsey: “Despite strong demand for COVID-19 vaccines in early 2021, by the end of May daily administration rates dropped to a third of their mid-April peak, reflecting waning consumer demand.”

While mandates and growing concern over the delta variant have moderately spurned vaccination rates, almost 37 percent of the US population remains to see its first dose.*

All this means that the effectiveness of vaccination efforts are more important than ever. Because we work in public health, many of our partners already work with fixed budgets, so effective, economical, and efficient efforts are even more crucial.

We’ve already been working with fire departments, community-based organizations, and other public health groups throughout the Greater Seattle area to better target overlooked communities, but we’re doing more.

Introducing the Signetic Outreach Dashboard

We’re now in talks with the Washington state Department of Health to access demographic data for vaccination rates in our home state. Vaccination and demographic data could reveal ZIP code, ethnicity, and age trends that aren’t currently available. More importantly, it would allow our partners to see where their efforts could be more effective.

See a early-stage demo, with mock data showing ZIP code targeting:

The benefits to better targeting hotspots are significant. Hotspots are correlated with virus mutation and variants, and they can obviously overload hospitals and points of care both in the immediate vicinity and in areas outside of it. And the discussion isn’t purely an academic one. In Alaska, where the rate of Covid cases is higher than anywhere in the US, 20 medical centers across the state recently turned to emergency measures to allow the rationing of healthcare.

“We have medevaced people all the way to Seattle, and some of our providers have reported that it has taken them literally 12, 18, 24 hours of phone calls to find a place that will accept one of our patients,” Carol Austerman, chief executive officer of Kodiak Community Health Center, told the Guardian.

In the fight against Covid-19, we need all the tools we can create. This tool is ready. We’re working on getting the data. With it, we’ll have the ability to help our partners identify gaps in services and vaccinations in our communities, reach out to and activate relevant community-based organizations, and track changes in outcomes, creating a feedback loop that doesn’t currently exist.

* Data as of September 16, 2021

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