MEDINA, Ohio — Like the rest of the country, Medina County has been hit hard by COVID-19.

The Medina County Health Department has been busy for months juggling public safety amid increasing COVID-19 cases and deaths with messaging, testing, contact tracing, and now vaccinations.

“We don’t have enough to vaccinate everybody right now, but as we get it and we’re averaging about 300 vaccines a week and we have 170 almost 180,000 people in Medina County,” said Kristen Hildreth, community health division director at the Medina County Health Department.

Hildreth said, logistically, it’s a lot to manage, but a new mobile app from a Mentor company is helping to streamline the vaccine scheduling process.

“If we can eliminate somebody coming and signing a paper,” Hildreth said. “We used to do, you know, appointments or vaccines - the actual vaccine in the arm every, you know, 15 minutes. Well we’re scheduling them every five minutes. So the process, the efficiency of getting people through because that first part of all that paperwork is done right on the phone, on the app. They come, they check in, we scan and go.”

The app is called ArmorVax and it’s a product of RB Sigma.

RB Sigma has existed since 2014 and works in the supply chain management sphere.

It distributed PPE throughout the nation at the start of the pandemic, and since July has focused on making the next phase of immunizations easier for all.

“They did their research and they knew the vaccine was coming out and they knew there was nothing really in place specifically in Ohio that offered that streamlining,” said Tisha Smith, director of marketing at ArmorVax. “A lot of local health departments are, they may have a system for scheduling, but they don’t have that reporting feature. So two of our developers were actually on the team that created the State Immunization Registry for Ohio and so they knew the ins and out of that.”

.@OHdeptofhealth reports there are 78 COVID-19 vaccine administration locations in the state and 388,383 Ohioans have gotten the first dose. A Northeast Ohio company created a mobile app to help make mass COVID-19 vaccinations simpler. @RbSigma @MedinaHealth @SpectrumNews1OH pic.twitter.com/WFzgM3et2Z

— Micaela Marshall (@MMarshallTV) January 16, 2021

So far, the ArmorVax app is being used in a dozen Ohio health departments including Franklin, Hamilton, and Medina counties.

The goal is to continue to grow into more local health departments and eventually into private practices and pharmacies around the United States.

“This is working really well for us and it could work for other people,” said Hildreth.

In addition to the app for consumers, there is a website for medical providers that keep all records in one place, which helps cut down on data entry.

“ArmorVax enables us to track all of that and do that data collection that if we did by hand or by paper we’d then have to input it into something,” Hildreth said. “So having it inputted right away, it takes away that chance of error trying to input it and getting information to the state health department. So, there’s a lot of pluses to it.”

Since December, the ArmorVax app has been available for download in the App Store and Google Play. It also can be used to schedule COVID-19 testing and flu shots.