We first heard about the new tool Vaximap in a forum post by one of our members, who found it was useful for planning home visits. We spoke to the developers to find out more about using the tool and how it can help you in practice.

So, what is it?

Vaximap (https://vaximap.org) is a free online tool that plans the optimal route for house calls and is designed to support the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Typically, planning routes for home visits will be done manually using Google maps, but plotting postcode to postcode takes time and the journey won’t take into account the time required at each appointment.

The Vaximap site was developed by two students at Magdalen College, Oxford – Robert Staruch and Tom Kirk – who said, “Practice Managers were inputting addresses individually into Google maps to create routes. These people are already overstretched so I thought a simple intervention could really help them.”

According to the Beacon Medical Group in Plymouth: “We estimate that Vaximap saves at least an hour a day on planning time, and two hours per day on nurse travel time. Over our 230 housebound patients we would estimate four hours of planning time and 20 hours of nurse travel time.”

How does it work?

All you need to do is plot and upload an Excel spreadsheet of patient postcodes. You can adjust the variables on the website to include time spent at each appointment, and you can fix the number of patients to group them together (for example, 11 doses/patients per vial of AstraZeneca COVID vaccine). The results are generated into a webpage and sent to your inbox in less than a minute.

FAQs

Is the tool compliant with data protection? Yes, you can read more here. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) does not regard a postcode in isolation as being identifiable data, so if the website is used in accordance with the provided instructions, it does not present any significant risk.

Will the site always be free? It is the intention of the developers to keep the service free for use during the vaccination campaign, and they are working to secure funding.

Can I see an example? There is a sample route here to show you how the site works and the time-saving benefits.

Have you used Vaximap? How has it worked for you? Please comment below and we can pass on your feedback to the developers.