Last spring, when coronavirus vaccines were just a glimmer of hope, the Trump administration awarded the first of two non-competitive contracts worth up to $ 44 million to a national consulting firm to help patients register for immunized and states to collect detailed data on vaccine recipients.
The result was VAMS, a vaccine administration management system built by the company Deloitte, which was rejected by most states and became an object of contempt. And now, an immunization specialist who has offered the government its own mass vaccination tracker at a lower price than Deloitte’s is accusing the company and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of stealing its intellectual property.
Tiffany Tate, executive director of the Maryland Partnership for Prevention, made the claim in a cease and desist letter obtained by The New York Times, and later confirmed its authenticity in an interview with her lawyer on Friday. Ms. Tate, who spent two decades running immunization clinics in underserved communities, said she previewed her platform in May for Deloitte employees who were identified by the CDC as consultants.
The CDC has expressed an interest in buying it, she said. But instead, the centers asked Deloitte, without a competitive bidding process, to build their own system, rejecting warnings from state and local health officials and immunization managers that it was not advisable to launch an untested platform on through a crisis.
The letter, dated August 30, says that the CDC’s specifications “mirror” the system created by Tate – including a “new feature” that “eventually found its way into VAMS”. Tate, who is African American and whose work focuses on minority communities, said the rejection was especially painful in the midst of a pandemic that disproportionately affects people of color.
“I was in shock and really heartbroken because I worked with these people my entire career and respected and trusted them,” said Ms. Tate in the interview. “It was very, very disturbing.”
Ultimately, the market spoke. VAMS, which Mississippi state health officer Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs described this week as “suboptimal”, is being used in about 10 states. Ms. Tate offered to license her own system for $ 15 million – about a third of what the CDC pledged to pay Deloitte – so that the centers could give it to states free of charge. When the CDC rejected it, she said, she sold it to the United States herself.
Now, 27 states and jurisdictions (not 28 states as reported in an earlier version of this briefing item) are using it.
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment. Deloitte dismissed Tate’s claims as “unfounded” in a statement issued by his spokesman.