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In March 2020, the South African National Department of Health (NDoH) contracted IMS to use Bluebird as an urgent interim measure until their existing national system could be suitably improved. They also contracted the right to use the Bluebird hospital solution for all hospitals in South Africa. The cloud based Bluebird solution was appealing in this context because of the limited IT capability of many of the public hospitals in South Africa.

Bluebird's COVID-19 National Surveillance System provides a unified platform to actively manage cases and contacts and to intelligently analyze comprehensive data by recording patient demographics, comorbidities, symptoms and isolation/quarantine decisions as well as the results of testing, Bluebird provides a comprehensive platform to manage:

[[ ul ]]Individual persons under investigation (PUI) |confirmed COVID cases|hospital admissions (the real time PCR results are especially useful in health facilities)|health-facility staff|business staff (particularly antibody testing)
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Unlike COVID-19 surveillance systems in many other parts of the world, Bluebird performed flawlessly at scale (at the height of the South African first wave Bluebird managed more than 400 000 test results in a single day).

The video and image are part of the Bluebird national dashboard where the rates of infections across a region are able to be reviewed instantly.

Bluebird can do this across facilities (hospitals, LTCFs) or for the whole population, by region, down to local districts and even voting wards.

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Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (what the CDC calls Nightmare Bacteria) typically exhibit resistance to almost all available antibiotics, and infection is associated with high morbidity and mortality, increased length of hospital stay, and high costs.

Traditional infection control strategies that target monitoring of clinical isolates as a trigger for initiating control interventions have not proved effective for CRE because they only address the "tip of the iceberg" - there are about 100 colonized patients for every infected patient. It is important to identify CRE patients prior to hospital admission and this is only possible with a national tracking system such as Bluebird.

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Besides CRE, Bluebird's national tracking system enables real time Picsurveillance of MRSA, VRE, LRE, C Diff, ESBL ,CRE, CRAB, CRPA and C.Auris. The latter, in particular is now, like CRE, a global threat.

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In parts of the world where HIV and TB is a major public health problem Bluebird's national tracking system is a tool that can save time and help save lives.

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A notifiable disease is any disease that is required by law to be reported to government authorities. Bluebird assists with the collation of relevant information and empowers the authorities to monitor the disease, and provide early warning of a possible outbreak.

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During the Pandemic Bluebird updated their mobile, bar coded Immunization Information System to manage both the logistics of vaccine distribution as well as the documentation of the clinical process.

The national COVID-19 vaccine rollout on the scale required during the COVID-19 pandemic was an ambitious undertaking for all countries, but especially for those, where the public health system was already buckling under pressure from the coronavirus.

Supply chain security and product verification rank high on a long list of challenges and without a reliable system to manage risk, one opens the door to fake vaccines, theft, hijacking and illegal product diversion. An ability to guarantee that every vaccine given is legitimate and from a controlled supply chain is critical in gaining the trust of the public and that trust is essential in ensuring the success of this enormous public health undertaking.

Pairing vaccinators with vaccine recipients and auditing vaccination and adverse events is another significant logistic challenge that is well managed by Bluebird.

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The Bluebird Immunization Information System (BlueIIS) is a secure, comprehensive, digital vaccination platform specifically designed for integrated vaccine distribution, delivery, immunization and monitoring of adverse events. Real-time monitoring of all these complex processes helps provide accountability. The entire process from vaccine manufacturer to post-vaccination surveillance is monitored.

BlueIIS utilizes both Serialization and Traceability and gives governments and the public they serve a sense of trust in the processes. Traceability reduces falsification, enables precise product identification and facilitates both recalls and adverse event reporting. By reducing a vaccinators' need for manual processes and data entry and enabling real-time monitoring of shipments and inventory, BlueIIS dramatically improves the efficiency of the entire process.

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BlueIIS empowers government by streamlining the collection of data on vaccine procurement, distribution, circulation, storage and vaccination. BlueIIS notifies vaccine recipients when their shots have been scheduled and who will administer them. The app enables authorities right down to the grassroots level to upload and access data on a real-time basis and provide updates to those on the priority list.

Once doses of vaccine are administered the BlueIIS can also generate an immunization certificate and store it on the recipient's behalf.

More information re: Department of Health Solution