Interview with Dr Kit Latham: 'How Credentially can support your Covid vaccination rollout.'

Tell us about yourself.

Hi, my name is Kit Latham. I was an accident emergency doctor, and now I am the CEO and co-founder of Credentially. We started the company to try and automate some of the paperwork involved in the onboarding, verification and management of healthcare workers. 

Sounds good. So, what are the biggest challenges in delivering the vaccination programme?

Capacity. The biggest challenge for delivering the vaccine will be making sure there's enough people who are trained to provide the vaccine and to ensure patient safety. But it’s also the logistics of maintaining safe and adequate cold chain transportation for the vaccine, ensuring that all the doses delivered are as effective as possible. 

Will more NHS resources be required to deliver the vaccination programme?

Yes. We’ll need a huge uplift in NHS resources and the wider health system to ensure that all 66.5 million people in the UK are properly vaccinated and have the full course of vaccination that they require for immunity. Potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of medical professionals will need to be involved in delivering these vaccines and any testing that’s subsequently required.

And how can Credentially help?

Credentially can help any employer or health provider to rapidly onboard, verify and train an emergency workforce of healthcare professionals and their support staff. We can reduce the time it takes to get a staff member fully compliant by up to 90% and we can reduce the failure rate of getting those staff through the door and on to the shop floor by up to 30%.

How has Credentially supported the Covid response so far?

We’ve already helped a number of healthcare organisations - both voluntary and NHS - to automate the sign up of emergency Covid workers by supporting grassroots GP initiatives like Team GP Covid and also national covid response programmes like the Covid Clinical Assessment Service. 

How did that go?

We were asked by NHS England to use the Credentially software to process GPs - including retirees, paramedics, dentists and other health professionals - to build a workforce to take Covid-related emergency calls. All this needed to be done as a priority, so within 3 days, we had analysed and digitised the sign-up, verification and onboarding process, which allowed NHS England to start processing applications automatically. We were able to train a team of over 40 NHS managers and administrators how to use our system, many of whom had never met due to lockdown. It was an incredible achievement and one we are immensely proud of. ‍

‍If you're interested in learning more about how Credentially can support your vaccination programme, book a demo.