Sydney Local Health District’s Richard Taggart on the tech behind its COVID-19 vaccination centre

Just months ago, Australia seemed to have the COVID-19 pandemic control. The population was getting back to work and life began to seem like it had returned to normal. But this serious virus has reared its head again with quarantine leaks resulting in new outbreaks and a fresh round of mini government-mandated lockdowns in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Now, a year-and-a-half into the global pandemic, just over 4 per cent of Australians are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, which lags behind other western nations by significant margins. But Richard Taggart, chief information officer at Sydney Local Health District and his team are doing their utmost to drive those numbers higher, deploying scalable technologies that are now enabling more than 7,000 Australians each day to get their jabs at a mass vaccination centre at Sydney’s Olympic Park.