Start-up helps with vaccination appointments

Time and again, vaccination appointments go unused or are missed. The start-up Impfbrücke is now helping to ensure that the vaccine is not left lying around. It notifies other people on the waiting list for the vaccine who can drop by spontaneously.

At the beginning of this week, 4.6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine were lying unused in German warehouses. A new high, partly because more vaccine is finally being delivered. The reason for the vaccine doses lying around includes missed vaccination appointments, which then remain free at short notice. The start-up Impfbrücke wants to solve this problem by using software to allocate vaccination appointments that have become free at short notice to other people on the priority list. They then receive a text message that the appointment is free and can pick up their dose.

Who is chosen is a matter of chance. The text message goes out to three people at the same time, and the appointment can be accepted within half an hour with a simple "yes" response as a text message. Currently, 13 vaccination centers are using the Impfbrücke software and connecting it to their data. Everything is encrypted and even the developers of Impfbrücke have no access.

The founders of the start-up are Manuel Hüttel and Pirmin Straub, who come from the Cologne-based start-up Lit Labs. They came up with the idea for the vaccination bridge in January and realized it within three weeks. They receive support from Black Mars Capital.