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International Project
Management Day 2023

People, Purpose, and Technology: The COVID-19 Vaccination Trio for Success

Ritesh Mittal

Head of Practice Extreme Automation Advisory & Consulting Services
IBM Consulting, Ireland
Ritesh Mittal

About the Presentation

In December 2020, Ireland faced a monumental challenge: to launch a nationwide COVID-19 vaccination program that would protect its population from the deadly virus. The program had to start with the most critical healthcare groups, such as frontline workers and elderly care staff, in just two weeks. The program also had to rely on a digital solution that could manage all aspects of the vaccination process, from communicating with the eligible groups to scheduling their appointments, recording data, reporting their outcomes, to auditing their compliance. The digital solution had to be fast, scalable, and secure, ensuring that the vaccination program could reach as many people as possible while safeguarding their health data and privacy. This was not an easy feat.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the pressure for digital transformation in population health programs around the world. Digital transformation is the use of technology to improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of health services. It can help health services to deliver better care, reduce costs, increase access, improve outcomes, and enhance patient satisfaction. But digital transformation is not a simple process. It requires careful planning, implementation, evaluation, and scaling. It also requires collaboration, innovation, and leadership. Many health services have difficulties in developing, implementing, assessing, and scaling their digital initiatives. They face barriers such as lack of resources, skills, infrastructure, governance, culture and trust. They need help and guidance from experienced leaders who can deliver results quickly and effectively. They need leaders who have proven track records of successful digital transformation projects in health care. They need leaders who can understand their needs, challenges, and opportunities. They need leaders who can provide them with best practices, tools, and frameworks. They need leaders who can support them throughout the digital transformation journey.  

In this session, you will learn how a functional minimal viable product (MVP) was developed for Ireland’s COVID-19 vaccination program in record time.  

Key Takeaways

  • Discover how an MVP was designed, built, and deployed for Ireland’s COVID-19 vaccination program using agile methods and cloud technologies.  
  • Learn about the benefits, challenges, and lessons learned from this digital transformation project.  
  • Find out how the MVP was tested, improved, and scaled to meet the changing needs and demands of the vaccination program.  

About Ritesh Mittal

For the last 20 years, Ritesh has led, advised, and delivered extreme automation & digital transformation initiatives to global industry clients. In his role with IBM Consulting Ireland, he leads the Extreme Automation practice for Irish markets. He is instrumental in enabling innovation for Health Solutions and Salesforce Solutions for clients across industries. He is a certified Agile Coach and Agile thought leader. Since Dec. 2020, Ritesh has also led services for National Vaccine Program as part of the IBM Consulting leadership team.  

He started with HCL as lead for research and development and was responsible for several hardware-software integrated business products like handheld devices or transaction kiosks. He advised clients for their BPM implementation and adoption in Invensys Skelta as global presales lead. He incubated and managed EXL Service’s global Advanced Automation and Robotics capabilities and delivery.