COVID-19 Vaccines: The Technology That’s Involved in Making Those Vaccines a Reality

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast host Shelly Kramer is joined by fellow analysts Daniel Newman and Fred McClimans for a conversation around the technology drivers and considerations around the upcoming and highly anticipated COVID-19 vaccinations and the technology that’s involved in making those vaccines a reality. The conversation revolved around the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, which was submitted on Friday for emergency authorization, as well as the Moderna vaccine, which is on a similar track. The conversation revolved around four key areas where technology can play a significant role. These included: Supply chain considerations, getting the manufacturing just right, the monitoring and analytics needed and role technology plays in supply chain; Distribution of the vaccine, not just in the US but around the world, where different storage situations might be challenging; Delivery of the vaccine, the acutal dosing of the population, what type of data collection is required for that, what the privacy concerns are; and Tracking the progress of people who have been vaccinated, their progress, side effects, etc. and how involved monitoring will be and what technology will be required. What technology is involved? The IoT, the IIoT, sophisticated analytics, AI layered into analytics and using machine learning to sift through and anonymize data, blockchain and others. These are exciting times as we move close to a vaccine, and for a bunch of tech geeks, equally exciting to think about the digital transformation at work here and all the technology drivers involved in making a worldwide vaccine initiative a reality.