Having regular contact with people on the ground in several countries spanning four continents, i’ve had the opportunity to witness how the COVID-19 pandemic response varies across societies. Some societies comprise governance structures which fall short in crisis management. Others reflect a populace with mixed levels of compliance and solidarity.

And yet, heroes emerge in all of these cases, as they often do during times of crisis.

Take the decision by Station F in France (Europe’s largest startup campus): Station F has temporarily dedicated its facility as a provisional site for walk-in vaccinations open to everyone. Or, here in Japan, the heroic initiative by Coral Capital to secure vaccination logistics for Tokyo’s startup community, a universe of people who generally rank fairly low on the priority list for Japan’s vaccination rollout. Similarly, CIC Tokyo has launched its own private endeavour last week to inoculate any of its members who are interested, many of whom would normally not be eligible for Japan’s public vaccination program until later this year.

With COVID-19 inoculations finally starting to ramp up nationally, new logistical bottlenecks reveal themselves, as is common with any new process flow in its early stages.

Apparently, one such bottleneck is the scheduling of healthcare personnel (predominantly doctors for regulatory reasons) to administer the vaccines. Given the relatively restrictive eligibility criteria of who is authorized to give shots, some vaccination centers are experiencing a shortage of doctors.

In an admirable display of both benevolence and agility, the founder of our portfolio company Aquila Systems decided to tackle this problem.

Aquila was already in the business of schedule optimization in healthcare. Specifically, Aquila provides AI-based scheduling software to improve the utilization capacities of operating rooms in hospitals across Japan. By re-purposing its existing software platform, Aquila quickly developed a new solution tailored to facilitate the scheduling of doctors who will administer COVID-19 vaccinations. The vaccine scheduling tool is designed based on the core premise that a doctor’s time represents the scarce resource, i.e. it’s the objective function to be optimized.

Accordingly, Aquila built a tool with a simple user interface and a painless workflow from the perspective of a doctor: Each eligible doctor (or other authorized medical professional) receives an email with a link. Clicking on the link takes them to a webpage with a calendar divided into 2 or 3-hour timeslots. The doctor indicates their availability by simply clicking on their preferred timeslots, if any. That’s it; the system takes care of the rest behind the scenes. Doctors will subsequently receive an email reminder of their respective booking times. They can integrate it into their Google calendar, but that’s optional. Kind of like a “Doodle for doctors.”

Aquila performed this entire development on a pro bono basis, and the company is offering its scheduling solution for free to any vaccination centers who are interested. Its first implementation is for one of the largest vaccination centers in Minato-ku, at the Tokyo American Club.

We are proud at Shizen Capital to financially back Aquila in these pro bono efforts, and we are humbled by their pursuit of a complementary social mission. Deep bow of appreciation to George at Aquila for delivering, and tip of the cap to Jim Weisser and Sam Rogan for helping make this first implementation happen.