Co-WIN, India's vaccine delivery tech platform, is going global as over 50 countries have expressed interest in adopting the technology. The government will create an open source version of the application to let other countries use it free of cost, said CoWIN chief RS Sharma.
In a tweet on June 28, Sharma, CEO of the National Health Authority, said, “Over 50 countries from across Central Asia, Latin America and Africa, are interested in this #technology. @PMOIndia has directed us to create an open-source version of CoWIN free of cost to any interested country.”
CoWIN
CoWIN (COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network) is a repurposed version of eVIN (Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network), an indigenously developed platform in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare since 2015. Its functions include digitisation of vaccine stocks and offering real time monitoring of cold chains through an app.
CoWIN was used for the mass rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, in phases, starting with people over 60 years and those over 45 years with comorbidities, from March 2021. Vaccination was opened for all over 18 years from May 1.
After the initial glitches the platform faced, in part due to scarcity of vaccines and technical issues, India set a milestone with over 80 lakh jabs on June 21, 2021, when the government's new vaccination policy came into effect. Vaccinations were administered for free in government hospitals for all and also pre-registration on CoWIN was done away with.
Sharma in an interview with Moneycontrol on June 22, shared that CoWIN can handle close to 2 crore vaccinations, and the platform can be scaled. “Every transaction on the platform is done through API (application programming interface) and yesterday at 12:04 pm, we hit 30,000 hits a second. We got 1.38 million API calls in a minute. We should be able to cater to all the load that comes on the platform,” he said.
Sharma further shared that the platform now have partners through whose application people can book vaccination slots in 12 languages.
According to Sharma, CoWIN could be used as building blocks to build other platforms in the healthcare sector. “India is at the cusp of a digital transformation, we have already done digital India, we are going to use this expertise on developing population-scale platforms to deliver services in agriculture, health, education and other areas. CoWin can be a good platform for vaccination for all kinds,” he said.
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