When problems arise, some people stand aside and complain. This is not Olivia Adams’ approach. The 28-year-old Arlington resident noticed complaints about the hostile system for the user to schedule a COVID-19 vaccination appointment in Massachusetts, and she got into the fray. She had a hunch that she could address some of the struggles experienced by people in the 75-year-old contingent and by friends and relatives who tried to help them.
The result? Adams developed his own website where people can find available times in Massachusetts, all on one page. It is available to anyone to access.
The site has not been approved or endorsed by the state and Adams said that as of now, his site offers information on only a few locations.
Adams applied his entrepreneurial spirit to this project during maternity leave from his job as a software developer at Athenahealth – the electronic health records company that develops software for doctors’ offices. She said she started her COVID-19 vaccination project after her mother-in-law had a hard time finding an online appointment.
“So I took a look and saw what resources were available and realized that there was a real need for a centralized location,” said Adams.
Adams has worked on his project for the past three weeks, interspersed with looking after his young son and two-year-old brother. She says she was lucky – the baby sleeps well.
“Basically, what my site does is every five minutes go through some code that I wrote that accesses different sites … to just look and see what it is currently showing for availability of appointments. And it returns that information to my site so that I can show everything together in one place. “
Adams said the development of the web was challenging, because there is “no concentrated effort on how to build these sites technically that will allow them to communicate”.
At a press conference on Friday afternoon, a reporter told Governor Charlie Baker about Adams’ website and asked him if the state would consider implementing a similar program.
Baker replied, “Send us her name, we’ll talk to her.”
Adams said that when her website went live this week, she contacted the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services. She has not yet been contacted by the state, much less by the governor. However, said Adams, she would definitely “love to collaborate”.
“So I took a look and saw what resources were available and realized that there was a real need for a centralized location.”
Olivia Adams
She also suggested that others with relevant skills should try to improve.
“I think that a lot of people are not encouraged to make these DIY solutions and publish them because they don’t think they are very useful,” said Adams. “And I think the biggest lesson I learned … is that we should never doubt that. And we should always boost our projects and see who needs them, because it will be more [people] than we think. “