TCS introduces solutions for COVID-19 testing, vaccine management

There is an opportunity to provide a seamless process across the entire value chain to prevent issues that could slow down testing and vaccinations, TCS said.

PTI
March 04, 2021 / 01:20 PM IST
 
 
live
  • bselive
  • nselive
Volume
Todays L/H
More

India’s largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Thursday announced the launch of a suite of COVID-19 testing and vaccine management solutions that streamlines stages of the end-to-end testing and vaccination journeys.

TCS, in a statement, said the suite of modular, easy-to-deploy solutions streamlines every stage of the end-to-end testing and vaccination, enabling more individuals to get tested and vaccinated faster and return to normal life experiences.

Vaccination or test for COVID-19 involves a highly complex orchestration of multiple stakeholders from manufacturing to transportation, allocation to storage, distribution to scheduling, and reporting to monitoring.

There is an opportunity to provide a seamless process across the entire value chain to prevent issues that could slow down testing and vaccinations, TCS said.

Follow our LIVE blog for latest updates of the novel coronavirus pandemic

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

View more
How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

View more
Show

The suite leverages AI, robotics, blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), as well as TCS’ extensive network of technology partners.

This suite transforms all five stages of testing and vaccination journeys: research and manufacture, allocation and transport, storage and distribution, scheduling and administering, and monitoring and re-opening.

It enables ecosystem participants at each of these stages to seamlessly share critical information among themselves while complying with privacy and consent regulations, and to scale up their operations so communities receive the required quantities of tests and vaccines, the statement said.

"In designing its new solution suite, TCS emulated the example of successful retailers and other consumer-centric enterprises and adopted their proven, people-centric approach to optimising the testing and vaccination ecosystems,” it added.

Also, given the urgency of the problem, repurposing proven use cases from other consumer-facing industries helped speed up the design of an end-to-end solution, TCS said.

"The pandemic is changing our world in many ways, driving stakeholder collaboration across industries that share a commitment to getting testing and vaccines to everyone,” TCS Business Group Head Life Sciences, Healthcare and Public Sector Debashis Ghosh said.

TCS’ suite of COVID-19 Testing and Vaccine Management solutions is built to enable transparency, ease of access, and equity that will collectively accelerate a return to normalcy, he added.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here.
PTI
TAGS: #Business #coronavirus #Health #India #Tata Consultancy Services #Technology
first published: Mar 4, 2021 01:18 pm