Hey!
Two weeks have passed since I launched jagvillhavaccin.nu and it has been a bit messy. Some regions were scared to say the least and there was more attention than expected so I waited a bit before inviting more to contribute to the project and to announce it publicly here.
What is jagvillhavaccin.nu?
In short, it is a site that collects vaccine times from many vaccination centers around Sweden.
The service does this with so-called * scrapers * who visit hundreds of booking platforms several times per hour and provide an overall picture of the situation in many regions.
Why?
This service makes it much easier to find a vaccination slot in your region. If there are no times, it will be visible instantly and you do not need to check every single booking page.
This means that many citizens can save time, but it also makes it possible to find a time for people who usually do not have time to reload web pages and log in with BankID all day. Teachers, bus drivers, many professions who do not sit in front of a computer screen. It also makes vaccine hunting easier for certain groups who have difficulty with digitization and who are often also in a risk group.
When there are no free times, it also becomes a huge relief for the booking platforms because far fewer people check manually. In some cases, this means better access to health services in general. In the Stockholm Region for instance, the app Always Open for much more than vaccine booking is used, but login has been disrupted due to very high load.
Can I help with this project?
Yes of course! JVHV (short for Jag Vill Ha Vaccin) is 100% a civic tech project and the goal is for everyone who wants to to be able to contribute!
The code is open (scrapers, frontend) and so is the data.
Even the infrastructure is open as it uses Github Actions. You can check all the times the scraper is run and whether it ran successfully on this page.
So if you have some knowledge of programming (or want to get started), don’t hesitate to reach out! There is already some kind of roadmap on Github and you can add new suggestions in Issues.
If you want to help but can’t code, you’re also welcome! Just get in touch! If the times are not available in your region, a simple way to help could be to reach out to them and ask (nicely) if they can make their data available.
Feel free to join the project by leaving a message in this thread. For realtime discussion, you can also join the thread #jagvillhavaccin on the Discord space of Öppna Skolplattformen (ask me in this thread or at kontakt@jagvillhavaccin.nu and I’ll send you an invite).
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