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The launch of the COVID-19 vaccine could be delayed due to technical problems, doctors and health officials warned, after the first week of the vaccination program was marred by difficulties in data collection.
GPs have been forced to collect data on the Pfizer vaccine release by hand, following problems with the software used to keep track of who received the vaccine.
A senior health official told Sky News that the IT system, known as Pinnacle, was “constantly failing” and that GPs “had to record on paper and then transfer.”
The official said the problem could help explain why the government has had trouble publishing figures on how many people have received the vaccine as of Wednesday morning, when Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi tweeted what the Department of Health and Social Care described as “provisional” figures.
The official also raised concerns about the system for recording and booking appointments, known in the field as “call and retrieve.”
Despite months of promise, they said, there was still no system that could register everyone who had received the vaccine.
As a result, the official said, GPs were unable to find out who had already been vaccinated at a hospital, causing delays in check-ups and increasing the risk that some people might get lost or even get vaccinated twice.
Dr Elliot Singer, a GP at Waltham Forest in North London, said his practice had experienced “enormously frustrating” problems with Pinnacle not connecting to other systems and continuing to fail.
“That creates a backlog of patients because we have to manually keep that on paper. But then someone has to enter that at a later date, and all of those things cause delays,” he said.
“The weather is not good and we have elderly people waiting in the cold to receive their vaccination due to these kinds of delays.”
Dr. Singer said there was no “call and retrieve” system for the vaccine.
Instead, his team was using time-consuming workarounds that required administrative staff to manually enter the same details into two different systems each time a patient had an appointment for vaccines.
“We are all really frustrated,” he told Sky News. “It just doesn’t help us run the show.”
A senior health official told Sky News that the IT system has been ‘constantly failing’
Sky News understands that consulting firm PA Consulting has been asked to build a dashboard showing the latest vaccine numbers, but health officials have been told the system won’t be ready until January.
The software used to register patients receiving the vaccine was changed last week from one called Sonar to Pinnacle, owned by British medical company EMIS.
An NHS spokesperson said: “There has been an excellent start for the Primary Care Network vaccination this week. EMIS has confirmed that its slow system lasted less than 30 minutes and is fully resolved.”
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Zahawi released the first numbers of the vaccination program in the UK on Wednesday morning, saying there were 108,000 vaccinations in England, 7,897 in Wales, 4,000 in Northern Ireland and 18,000 in Scotland.
A government spokesperson said: “Working with the NHS and Public Health England we will publish detailed data on the latest numbers of vaccines administered weekly and this will start as soon as possible.
“This is the largest immunization program in our nation’s history and data collection is crucial to our understanding of acceptance, impact, and future planning.”
