India uses eVIN (electronic vaccine intelligence network) for several years now under its Universal Immunization Program, providing real time feedback on vaccine inventories, power outages, temperature fluctuation etc. CoWIN is an extension of eVIN in essence. It is a cloud-based IT solution to prepare, conduct, track and evaluate Covid-19 vaccination in India.

Under the operating guidelines for Covid-19, the Health Minister has produced: “The facility/planning unit and sessional sites, followed by planning & scheduling, and implementation of vaccination procedure, enables users to be registered (admins, monitors, vaccinators), beneficiaries (voluntary upload and individual registration).

“The CoWIN system will track both beneficiaries and vaccines on a real-time basis at the national, state, and regional level, adding the guidelines. This will enable the system to monitor national, state, district and sub-district use, waste and coverage of Covid-19 vaccination.”

Once the full list of health workers and frontline workers – these are the top two priority vaccination categories – are received, they will be registered by the district government through a bulk upload of data. In addition, the details of the persons working with each facility that is a hospital or clinic will be given. The software checks for errors and duplications, and only verified entries can then be uploaded.

Vaccinators will then create sessions with relevant information and the number of vaccine beneficiaries. This will generate SMSs to inform recipients of the time and place. The vaccinators will again upload these information once the vaccination is complete. If you fail to activate the beneficiary, you can slot for a later date.

Only at a later point when the initial groups are completed is the option of self-registration available. People who are willing to be immunized can register by uploading one of 12 ID documents. The following are: