India crosses 100 crore vaccination mark in one day, Chairman of Empowered Committee for Administration COVID-19 Vaccine in the country, RS Sharma, too CEO of National Health Authority (NHA) spoke to Gaurav Pandey of TOI on Thursday during his two-day visit to Jharkhand co-win applications, the challenges they face and the future usefulness of the platform. Part:
Q: We have crossed 100 crore jobs today. You were the man behind its technical hand (co-win). To whom do you give credit for this success?
A: We would not have achieved this feat without the hard work of our healthcare workers, be it doctors, nurses, managers from the national level to the panchayat level. This achievement is dedicated to him as he has worked hard to vaccinate a billion people in the last nine months.
Q: How did the idea of the Co-Win application take shape?
A: India is a huge country with over a billion people and to vaccinate all demographics and keep track of each dose manually was next to impossible. So we have come up with this platform to ensure that every citizen can be seized.
Question: What was the biggest challenge during the establishment of the portal and how much manpower and money was invested to build it?
A: The biggest challenge was the digital divide so we had to come up with a platform that would serve everyone from an iPhone user to a basic feature phone. So, we decided that it needs to be flexible and at the same time have the necessary security for authentication. Coming to the investment part, it doesn’t cost a fortune and you won’t believe it if I say a technical team of five coders worked on this along with some other technical staff. The money that is going to be spent is on data storage which is cloud based.
Q: As you said the portal has not spent much on the exchequer but it seems that globally countries are looking for the platform for their own use. Will it be exported with duty to them?
A: Realizing the resilience of Co-Win, a total of 147 countries participated in the training-cum-knowledge sharing program, which was organized and participated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 5 July. We are already in the process of training different countries. Experts on the platform and we may bring it as an open source in the near future.
Question: What will be the role of Co-Win after the Kovid-19 vaccination program ends?
A: This is something that is very special because we will be using it for routine immunization with slight modifications for the Universal Immunization Program. Under this, we will make changes in the software to accommodate the required data and this will help the government to keep track of all the immunization programs as well as its beneficiaries. It will also help healthcare workers and beneficiaries to be reminded of their dosage and will be a game changer.
Q: We have crossed 100 crore jobs today. You were the man behind its technical hand (co-win). To whom do you give credit for this success?
A: We would not have achieved this feat without the hard work of our healthcare workers, be it doctors, nurses, managers from the national level to the panchayat level. This achievement is dedicated to him as he has worked hard to vaccinate a billion people in the last nine months.
Q: How did the idea of the Co-Win application take shape?
A: India is a huge country with over a billion people and to vaccinate all demographics and keep track of each dose manually was next to impossible. So we have come up with this platform to ensure that every citizen can be seized.
Question: What was the biggest challenge during the establishment of the portal and how much manpower and money was invested to build it?
A: The biggest challenge was the digital divide so we had to come up with a platform that would serve everyone from an iPhone user to a basic feature phone. So, we decided that it needs to be flexible and at the same time have the necessary security for authentication. Coming to the investment part, it doesn’t cost a fortune and you won’t believe it if I say a technical team of five coders worked on this along with some other technical staff. The money that is going to be spent is on data storage which is cloud based.
Q: As you said the portal has not spent much on the exchequer but it seems that globally countries are looking for the platform for their own use. Will it be exported with duty to them?
A: Realizing the resilience of Co-Win, a total of 147 countries participated in the training-cum-knowledge sharing program, which was organized and participated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 5 July. We are already in the process of training different countries. Experts on the platform and we may bring it as an open source in the near future.
Question: What will be the role of Co-Win after the Kovid-19 vaccination program ends?
A: This is something that is very special because we will be using it for routine immunization with slight modifications for the Universal Immunization Program. Under this, we will make changes in the software to accommodate the required data and this will help the government to keep track of all the immunization programs as well as its beneficiaries. It will also help healthcare workers and beneficiaries to be reminded of their dosage and will be a game changer.
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