When problems arise, some people stay on the sidelines and grab. This is not the Olivia Adams approach. The 28-year-old resident of Arlington noticed complaints about the user-friendly system for booking a COVID-19 vaccination in Massachusetts, and she took up the fight. She had a feeling that she was experiencing the struggle that people in the 75-year-old age and older could experience, and the friends and family members were trying to help them.
The result? Adams has developed her own website where people can find available appointments in Massachusetts, all on one page. She makes it available to everyone.
The site has not been approved or endorsed by the state, and Adams has said from now on that her site provides information on only a few sites.
Adams applied her can-do spirit to this project while on maternity leave from her job as a software developer at Athenahealth – the electronic health record company that develops software for medical offices. According to her, she started her COVID-19 vaccination project after her mother-in-law had trouble finding an appointment online.
“So I took a look and looked at what resources were available and realized that a central location was needed,” Adams said.
Adams has been working on her project for the past three weeks, alternating with caring for her baby son and his two-year-old brother. She says she was lucky – the baby is a good sleeper.
“What my site actually does is every five minutes. It’s going through a code I wrote and accessing different sites … just to look at and see what it’s currently showing for appointment availability. And that return the information to my website so I can show it all together in one place. “
Adams said the web development is challenging because “there is no concentrated effort to technically build these sites that will enable them to talk to each other.”
At a news conference Friday afternoon, a reporter told Gov. Charlie Baker about Adams’ website and asked him if the state would consider implementing a similar program.
Baker replies, “Send her name, we’ll talk to her.”
Adams said when her website was launched this week, she reached out to the Massachusetts Health and Human Services division. She has not yet been contacted by the state, let alone the governor. Adams said she definitely ‘would like to work together’.
“So I walked around and looked at what resources are available and realized that there is a need to have a centralized location.”
Olivia Adams
She also suggested that other people with appropriate skills try to make improvements.
“I think a lot of people are not encouraged to make and publicize such do-it-yourself solutions because they don’t think it’s very helpful,” Adams said. ‘And I think the biggest lesson I learned … is that we should never doubt it. And we always have to tackle our projects and see who needs them, because it’s going to be more [people] than we think. ”