The year 2020 brought trauma, anxiety, and an uncertain future. The coronavirus pandemic coupled with social and political upheavals made life miserable for those of us sitting on the sidelines. We watched the casualty numbers: how many cases, how many hospitalized, how many died based on demographics. Helpless, we waited for fact-based information to determine how we should live our lives. Could we safely go to the grocery store, go to our doctors, visit with our family and friends, or just borrow a book from the library? Did we have to wipe down our groceries, our counters, wear masks everywhere? More questions waited for answers.
As we endured social distancing, mask wearing, staying away from people as we exercised outdoors, we eagerly followed the progress of vaccines. When the FDA approved their emergency use here in the US and similar agencies approved them in other countries, we foresaw the end of the pandemic and the return to something close to a normal existence.
The vaccines represented medical miracles but the system to deliver them to people’s arms did not. We perceived the process and infrastructure to put the vaccine into arms appeared not designed through good systems engineering practice and seemed politically driven and not fact and logic driven.
We saw from media reports and our own experience that vaccine delivery to people’s arms, at least in the US, did not meet expectations. While the rate of production and distribution continued to increase, those eligible to receive the vaccine remained confused or uninformed about how they obtain an appointment to ensure they can get vaccinated on a specific date at specific time.
This project defines a system that permits any resident of a state (of the United States), no matter his/her place of residence or access to technology, to obtain a vaccine appointment for the initial vaccine dose, the second dose (if needed), and a booster dose and maintains the vaccine record for the resident. We present this definition in the form of operational needs, SysML artifacts (Use Cases with Use Case Narratives, Context Diagram, Requirements Diagram, and Activity Diagrams), Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs). Further we present an initial simulation to evaluate how the system might perform under a given scenario and assumptions. The definition doesn’t include a specific implementation but provides a reference model for any government entity wanting to improve its current system for delivering any vaccine, not just the COVID-19 vaccine, into arms.
The authors conduct this project under the auspices of the INCOSE Critical Infrastructure Protection and Recovery Working Group.