Mass. woman to meet with governor after building easy-to-use COVID-19 vaccine registration website on maternity leave

(Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

(ARLINGTON, Mass.) Olivia Adams, a software developer from Arlington and mom to two kids, recently created a new COVID-19 vaccine registration website, macovidvaccines.com, after she saw how her mother-in-law struggled to find and book an appointment.

Now, Governor Charlie Baker plans to meet with her about the state using and improving the website, according to NBC Boston.

Gov. Baker said Monday, "Yes, we have taken a look. We have reached out, we expect at some point this week we’ll talk to her.

The issue that caught Adams' attention, she told NBC, was there are many different websites to register for a COVID-19 vaccine and they all work a little bit differently.

She said, "There's no good way to say like, 'OK, what places have availability in the next week or how many slots are available? Am I wasting my time calling every CVS around me to see what the heck is going on?'"

The 28-year-old told CNN she spent about three weeks and 40 hours developing the website and she did it while on maternity leave for her 2-month-old son.

"I thought I'd take a look and I was surprised at how decentralized everything was and how there are a thousand different websites to go to," Adams said. "I thought, 'How can I put my software skills to use to make this better in my free time?'"

She said it was her first time making a complicated website on her own, explaining, "The hardest part about it is that every website that has availability information I have to kind of tell my computer how to read that website like a human. That's where all the man hours went in."

A script on Adams' site runs every five minutes across 20 other vaccine sites, some from the state and others run by grocery stores and pharmacies, and updates existing appointment information on the site.

With the site's success, people from other states have contacted Adams to see if something similar could be done for their states. She said she hopes to be able to explore that and encouraged anyone with an idea to just go for it.

"I encourage anyone who thinks they have a half-baked idea to go full force and they'll be surprised how well it turns out," she said. "I built it for everyone but I didn't think everyone would use it."

Follow me to see more articles like this.

...

Follow