A new innovation in approaching vaccine programme administration and public engagement using accessible digital communications technology at-scale.

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A national vaccine programme will be a huge undertaking. It will be a challenge from an operational, resourcing and technical perspective, to make sure that the programme is efficiently delivered, prioritising those with the greatest need in a safe and effective manner.In this situation business-as-usual approaches to administrating vaccination programmes through NHS primary care (which rely on expensive and time-consuming combinations of posted letters and staff led phone-calls) are not suitable.Appt-Health (Appt) is a social enterprise whose mission is to make equitable access to preventive healthcare effortless in the UK. For the last year we have been leading an Innovate UK funded project to develop an innovative patient engagement tool which is integrated into GP practice IT systems and uses digital communications to increase the public uptake of NHS Health Checks.We use accessible digital technology, SMS and automated voice, to make it easier to access important preventive healthcare appointments. Preliminary analysis has shown that our approach is 46% more effective (in terms of uptake, cost-effectiveness and required administrative time) than the status quo.We propose a repurposing of Appt's patient engagement technology to drive public uptake of COVID-19 vaccination appointments and reduce the administrative pressure on primary care.