5 October 2021
The Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) board has heard how the scale and pace of agile development work for the Welsh Immunisation System (WIS) is “a complete game changer” and “critical to the success of the [Welsh mass vaccination] program” at its September board meeting.
The comments were made by Grant Davies, Head of Planning and Performance for the Aneurin Bevan Mass Vaccination Program, as he gave feedback about his experience of working with the WIS team, which is led by Gillian Davison, Product Owner at Digital Health and Care Wales.
Grant said that WIS is “a paradigm shift, really, in the ability to deliver such a complex program at such scale and pace.
“In my role and for my counterparts in other health boards, we’re ultimately responsible for ensuring that multiple offers of vaccinations are made to a whole population equitably, within set criteria and set time frames, needing to consider numerous risks and age factors across multiple sites. Integrating four different phases of the vaccination course and ensuring that each vaccination is recorded accurately, which enables additional scheduling in line with intervals that are set and sometimes amended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCBI).
“Without the Welsh Immunisation System that would have been extremely challenging, if not impossible…. not only the development of the system that has been so critical to the success of the program in Wales, but also how it's adapted and evolved again over such a short space of time based on user needs and feedback.
“We have dealt with many, many in-flight changes, and again the adaptability that the system and the colleagues…. have shown has been unbelievable and it's just so incredibly impressive. The product that has been provided to the users has been five star without a doubt.
“[The team’s] dedication and ability through the whole time from the initial planning stages to what is now a booster or third dose phase has been incomparable to anything I've ever experienced with partnership working…. the team have been a huge credit to DHCW, the NHS and the residents of Wales.
“I would like to thank everybody that's been involved in the development of this system…. it's not an understatement, it has been a paradigm shift and critical to the success of this program in Wales.”
Watch Grant’s feedback in full in the board meeting video [starts at 00:28:57].