Ready to be vaccinated, but having trouble getting your hands on an appointment to get the shot? Dr. B might be able to help. The website designed to find matches for leftover vaccinations, Dr. B has over two million people signed up nationwide. The website itself says its mission is “to make access to care, specifically the COVID vaccine, more efficient and more equitable.”
While making an appointment to get a shot in general has been seen as a struggle for many, another struggle is the amount of no shows and cancelations from the people who do get their hands on a time slot. When certain types of vaccinations such as Pfizer and Moderna, get taken out of their temperature hold, they only have a certain amount of time to be used. If no one is able to step up to use the shots within the time period, they need to be discarded.
The website is founded by Cyrus Massoumi, described as an “entrepreneur and investor.. founder and former CEO of ZocDoc..” Ian Lipkin, listed as an advisor of the site, is very experienced in the medical field, specializing in outbreak response for over 30 years. Possibly more importantly, Lipkin is well known because he “created the C3 test, an ultra-sensitive COVID-19 test that can detect and quantify even low viral loads.” Besides these incredible contributors, the website has many more great team members behind it, all listed with biographies under “Meet the people behind Dr. B.”
The site is free to all, and fairly simple to use. To start, you create an account using your phone number, name, email address and zip code. The site asks about any conditions you may have, your job, and whether you live in a group setting. After submitting that information, your profile is created. The process could not be more simple.
Once you’re registered in the websites system, you’ll simply receive a text if there is a leftover vaccine that you match up with. This is what makes Dr. B such a revolutionizing and important development.
If you’re wondering just how effective the website has been in putting use to the leftover vaccinations, it’s hard to find actual numbers. But based on health care worker opinions, the site still seems to be just an added benefit to this situation. Brittany Marsh, a pharmacy owner from Arkansas spoke on the leftover shots, saying that “more times than not, we just have a no-show.” Based on that, it seems fair to assume that Dr. B is helping to relieve some of the stress of finding people to avoid wasting a precious vaccination.
