Last spring, when coronavirus vaccines were just a glimmer of hope, the Trump administration awarded the first of two no-bid contracts worth up to $ 44 million to a national consulting firm to help patients register to be immunized and states rallied detailed data on vaccine recipients.
The result was VAMS, a vaccine delivery management system developed by Deloitte, which has been rejected by most states and has become an object of contempt. And now, an immunization expert who offered the government its own massive vaccination tracker at a price lower than Deloitte’s is accusing the company and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of stealing its intellectual property.
Tiffany Tate, the executive director of the Maryland Partnership for Prevention, made the allegation in a strike letter obtained by The New York Times and later confirmed its authenticity in an interview with her attorney on Friday. Ms. Tate, who has run immunization clinics in underprivileged communities for two decades, said she previewed her platform in May for Deloitte officials identified by the CDC as consultants.
The CDC expressed an interest in buying it, she said. But instead, without a competitive bidding process, the centers asked Deloitte to build its own system, ignoring warnings from state and local health officials and immunization managers that it was unwise to run an untested platform in the middle of a crisis. roll.
The letter, dated Aug. 30, says the CDC’s specifications reflect the system Ms. Tate created – including a “new feature” that “eventually made its way to VAMS.” Ms. Tate, who is African-American and whose work has focused on minority communities, said the rejection was especially painful in the heat of a pandemic that disproportionately affects people of a color.
“I was in shock and I was really heartbroken because I have worked with these people all my career and I respected and trusted,” said Ms. Tate in the interview. “It was very disturbing.”
Ultimately, the market spoke. VAMS, which Mississippi state health officer Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs, described as “suboptimal” this week, is used in about 10 states. Ms. Tate offered to license her own system for $ 15 million – about a third of what the CDC pledged to pay Deloitte – so the centers could give it to states for free. When the CDC turned her down, she said, she sold it to states herself.
Now 27 states and jurisdictions (not 28 states as an earlier version of this briefing item) use it.
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment. Deloitte dismissed Ms. Tate’s claims as “baseless” in a statement from its spokesperson.