Dr Alan Leeb’s experiences as a GP caught in the middle of a national vaccine scare led him to devise technology to track adverse events in real  time.

In April 2010, the Perth GP was blindsided to discover nearly a third of children had an adverse reaction after being vaccinated for flu at his practice.

He then learned from hospital discharge summaries that three of his young patients had febrile convulsions and at least eight were hospitalised — from a total of 337 given the 2010 trivalent vaccine, known as Fluvax.

And his practice wasn’t alone. WA had a program of publicly funded flu vaccines for children aged five and under, and across the state, there were over 1000 adverse events reports.