IBM And Moderna Join Forces To Improve COVID-19 Vaccine Tracking

IBM has inked an agreement with COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna to pilot technologies to improve supply chain management and tracking of the vaccines.

The companies will explore improved information sharing among governments, health care providers, life science organizations and individuals through AI, blockchain and hybrid cloud, according to a statement Thursday.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based tech company and Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech Moderna hope to improve confidence in vaccine programs and increase the vaccination rate if the pilots prove successful.

Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. CRN has reached out to both companies for comment.

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As part of the deal, IBM will supply technology to decrease supply chain disruptions through information sharing by various stakeholders in delivering vaccines to communities, from manufacturing facilities to administration sites, according to the statement.

IBM will offer its Digital Health Pass tool built on blockchain technology to help individuals control their personal health information and organizations verify health credentials for employees, customers and travelers, including test results, vaccination records and temperature checks.

At the start of the pandemic, IBM joined the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, a public-private partnership to give supercomputing resources to researchers for COVID-19 vaccine development. Other vendors in the consortium include Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft.

IBM also made its IBM Clinical Development tool available to trial sponsor organizations, including hospitals, contract research organizations and academic institutions.

In January, a number of top enterprise IT companies including Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce joined a new initiative focused on providing digital access to COVID-19 vaccination records.

In December, IBM researchers identified a global phishing campaign that targeted organizations associated with a segment of the COVID-19 supply chain in an apparent nation-state effort.