Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1380662
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 JUNE 2021 12 COMMERCIAL MITA: One of the health ministry's secret weapons in the fight against COVID PAUL COCKS THE COVID-19 pandemic saw the introduction of several web portals, mobile apps and on-line services that were an essential part of the strategy adopted by the health authorities to control and mitigate the spread of the virus. Vaccin.gov.mt, Covid Alert Malta, also referred to as the 'the contact tracing app', and myhealth have all become household names as people signed up to the different ser- vices that became available soon after the pandemic hit Malta. The orchestrator behind these technological tools and servic- es was the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA), often the unsung hero behind many such essential services. And the pandemic highlighted, more than ever, the close rela- tionship between the Agency and the Ministry for Health. I sat down with Simon For- mosa, project manager of MI- TA's Health Team, and Dr Ste- fan Buttigieg, a public health specialist within the Ministry for Health. Formosa said that when designing the vaccin. gov.mt portal, the team had to come up with a comprehensive, yet simple, service that could be easily accessed by anyone, even those who are not so I.T. savvy. "The service had to be intuitive and user-friendly, en- abling anyone to register and apply to take the vaccine with a few clicks," he said. "In fact, in just four clicks, a visitor is able to register for the vaccine." Another major challenge was more technical in nature, in that the on-line service had to be able to support the possi- bility that thousands of people will try to access the site at the same time. "We designed a scalable system that, irrespec- tive of how many users would access the service at any one time, the service would remain stable and fully functional," he said. Buttigieg said that he had been amazed at how easy to use the final product was. "I think the success of the service was in its simplicity, and everyone