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View all search results[DISCOURSE] Indonesia, WhatsApp boost vaccination rollout among medical workers
The Health Ministry has partnered with WhatsApp to provide a new chatbot service to facilitate registration for the COVID-19 vaccination program across the country.
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he Health Ministry has partnered with WhatsApp to provide a new chatbot service to facilitate registration of the COVID-19 vaccination program across the country. Launched on Jan. 15, two days after the vaccination rollout, this is the first WhatsApp chatbot worldwide that helps medical workers to connect to their nearest health facilities to receive the jab. The Jakarta Post’s Budi Sutrisno sat down with WhatsApp Asia Pacific director of public policy Clair Deevy to learn more about the service.
Question: How did the collaboration begin and why Indonesia first?
Answer: As vaccines have become available, governments are really needing to work on their plans for vaccination and how they decide who gets it. From our point of view, this is less about selecting Indonesia and more that [Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin] came in in the end of December with a very clear plan about getting vaccinations out.
For nine days, we worked with a local developer called DAM Corp to build this WhatsApp chatbot that allowed them to put the planning and the appointments out to frontline medical workers.
It’s exciting for me that we have this WhatsApp chatbot helping deliver vaccine in Indonesia, the first in the world to be doing it. I am sharing the examples of flowcharts and how Indonesia has planned it with other countries as I’m speaking to them to help them wrap their heads around it. So, this is really creating the benchmark for other ones that you’re going to see coming out in other areas around the world.
Is this chatbot going to be just for medical workers or the wider public as well?
This will be a long partnership with the Health Ministry. It’s designed in a way that, depending on their plan and who needs to be registered, it can be tailored accordingly. So, at the moment, the first priority as we were told is to get these frontline medical workers their vaccinations.
