As millions of Americans receive vaccinations in the coming months, will there be a consumer demand for vaccine data or “proof of vaccine” on their smartphones?
This NY Times article is a great read.
There is a serious debate on whether health passes, electronic vaccine credentials, proof of vaccine, etc is truly needed. Assuming it does happen, below is a quick summary of some of the puzzle pieces.
Patient Portals
When a provider administers a vaccine, it is entered into their electronic medical record system. Today, people can use apps on their smartphones to connect with the doctor’s electronic medical system called a “Patient Portal”. You setup a username and password with your doctor to login to the Patient Portal website to view your health records such as lab results, immunizations and prescriptions.
Apps like Apple Health and CommonPass (Android) use common health data standards (HL7 FHIR) and application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect with these patient portals if your doctor has opted to make this available.
Here’s an example from Aaron Miri, CIO UT Austin showing vaccine records from a EHR connected to an iPhone displaying within the Apple Health app.
Immunization Information Systems
Each state, US territory and many large cities have an Immunization Information System (IIS) that is basically a big database that doctors, public health clinics and others have to report every vaccination into.
Vendors like Envision WebIZ and STC Health One that build these IIS systems that governments buy have consumer access portals.
Here’s an example from Nevada.
These portals use name, phone number and date or birth to match records and then the person can print out their vaccination records.
Hopefully, these vendors will introduce APIs that enable consumers connect their immunization records to their smartphones. States rely on these vendors and will likely not build these APIs on their own.
Work and School Safety Apps
There are a bunch of products that now help businesses and schools manage the health and safety of their populations. These tools will have features to track vaccinations.
An open question is whether these tools will be able to directly access vaccine records for their populations from the immunization information systems and in-turn enable consumers to have this data on their smartphones.
Tech stuff
Below is a list of additional reading on the technical topics related to interoperability of immunization data.
Kelly Taylor's Blog 