Tech Giants to Watch as COVID-19 Vaccination Drive Ramps Up

The technology sector, which has shown resiliency since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, is now gaining solid traction during the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination drive, which seems to be the largest public health campaign in history.

In this crucial time, technology giants like Alphabet’s GOOGL Google, Microsoft MSFT, Amazon AMZN and Adobe ADBE are putting strong efforts to help government agencies, public and private healthcare institutions, and concerned communities to accelerate and manage their vaccination process.

Notably, fast, efficient and timely delivery of vaccines to the masses for COVID-19, which has had major negative impacts on the world economy, remains severely challenging.

Nevertheless, advanced technologies are playing a major role in carrying out the vaccination drive efficiently and smoothly throughout the world.

Industry 4.0 technologies such as cloud computing, AI, Blockchain, Machine Learning (“ML”) and Internet of Things (IoT) hold the potential to analyze the huge amount of data that is being generated during the global vaccination process.

To be precise, automation and AI are addressing the challenges of manufacturing billions of vaccination shots to a great extent. Further, automated solutions have been successful in managing cold-chain operations of pharmaceutical companies.

Furthermore, computer vision technology and robotics are gaining momentum in helping with the data entry component of vaccine distribution.

Moreover, the growing proliferation of smart technology-based vaccine platform solutions, end-to-end supply-chain solutions and salesforce.com’s CRM customer relationship management technology in boosting the reach of COVID-19 vaccines to the people remains noteworthy.

Per the latest data collected by Bloomberg, COVID-19 vaccines are being given at a rate of 11.3 million doses per day, currently. Further, above 458 million COVID-19 vaccine shots have been delivered across 134 countries.

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Tech Giants to Watch

Microsoft has supported the communities on the back of its successful COVID-19 response projects. The company’s new offering namely, Vaccine Registration and Administration Solution (“VRAS”), which helps in the process of registering and phased scheduling for vaccine distribution, remains noteworthy.

Also, VRAS enables compliant administration of resident assessment and, aid in the tracking and reporting of immunization progress.

Apart from VRAS, this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company has recently come up with Microsoft Vaccination Management based on Microsoft Power Platform. Notably, the new solution helps health organizations and governments to roll out their vaccination program quickly and safely.

To be precise, healthcare providers will be able to manage all vaccination logistics, scheduling, check-in, and records using Microsoft Vaccination Management. Further, the solution offers Health administrators a dashboard to track progress. Additionally, people can seamlessly book vaccination appointments, and receive reminders and notifications by using it.

Alphabet’s Google is witnessing strong momentum in the ongoing vaccination drive on the back of its robust cloud capabilities. Notably, its cloud division, Google Cloud, rolled out Intelligent Vaccine Impact solution (IVIs) to help communities and health organizations in getting vaccines to the masses safely and effectively.

IVIs is designed with a set of core technologies capable of increasing vaccine availability and providing access to those who need it. Further, the solution is capable of creating awareness by offering vaccine information and delivering large-scale acceptance of vaccines by assistinglocal and regional government agencies.

Furthermore, the solution helps to analyze, forecast and model COVID-19 cases by leveraging its newly developed ML-based time-series approach, AI-backed ‘what-if’ model and Application Modernization platform. This aids in decision-making on vaccine distribution and allocation.

Notably, IVIs has been deployed by many U.S. states, including Arizona, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon and the Commonwealth of Virginia’ where it is supporting vaccination drive at a large scale.

Currently, Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Amazon is constantly gaining steam on the back of its COVID-19 vaccination clinics. Further, the Zacks Rank #3 company’s cloud-computing arm Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) is helping pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers and patients in validating the authenticity of a COVID-19 with its COVID-19 vaccine verification lookup (API) capabilities.

This helps in eradicating fraudulent activities like fake drug supply. These APIs provide low latency, and scale up and down as per the need.

Apart from this, AWS has been aiding Moderna, a biotechnology company, in developing the latter’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Further, AWS has powered Carrier's Lynx platform with its ML, IoT, and analytics capabilities to track products from the manufacturing plant through distribution channels to vaccination clinics.

Meanwhile, Adobe has teamed up with government agencies across all 50 U.S. states to deliver digital experiences on the back of its Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud. As the vaccination drive is ramping up, the company is extending its support to the concerned agencies for efficient distribution.

Further, this Zacks Rank #3 company has the potential of streamlining eligibility determination, appointment scheduling and personalized reminders, and minimizing fraudulent activities.

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