(Photo : Getty Images: Hollie Adams / Stringer)
COVID-19 vaccine passport prompted companies and schools to debate how and what it would take to safely restart in-person operations with COVID vaccines.
Microsoft (MSFT), Salesforce (CRM), Oracle (ORCL), Cerner (CERN), Cigna's (CI) Evernorth, healthcare software provider Epic and the Mayo Clinic, among others, are the Vaccine Certification Programs or VCI.
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The Vaccine Credential Project wants to ensure that everybody has access to a safe, digital record of their COVID-19 vaccination, such as a digital vaccine passport, that can be stored in people's smartphones. Some of the largest tech companies and health care organizations in the country have come together to help promote that return to "normal." For anything from plane travel to attending concert venues, the documents could be used.
The VCI vaccine passport aims to create an open-source, standard model for how digital records of immunizations can be given to patients who want them by hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics that administer COVID-19 vaccines.
CEO of the Commons Project Foundation said, "Our goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) is to empower every individual with digital access to their vaccination records so they can use tools like CommonPass to safely return to travel, work, school, and life while protecting all their data privacy," during the press release.
The new group said the vaccine passport would create norms held in a digital wallet for encrypted digital copies of immunization credentials.
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Thursday's announcement comes after a tumultuous start to the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Of the 30.6 million doses of vaccines provided to U.S. hospitals, health centers, and pharmacies, as of Friday morning, only around 10.6 million individuals had received at least their first dose. Disease Management and Prevention Centers.
The Vaccine Certification Project vaccine passport aims to build an open-source, uniform model for how COVID-19 vaccine administration hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics render digital immunization records distributed to patients who want them.
Usually, immunizations are tracked by writing them down on a paper card for individuals to store with their vital documents and are often kept track of in the electronic medical records.
But the COVID-19 vaccine allowed a different method to be established for a variety of reasons.
For one thing, if individuals have to use them to reach classrooms, workplaces, and event sites, coronavirus vaccine records would need to be more conveniently transported, making a digital paper more realistic. They will need to be "interoperable," meaning the vaccine passport is the same model for documenting vaccine credentials that should be used by all organizations administering the shots.
With the Vaccine Credential Initiative, the tech companies involved in the campaign would play a key role in ensuring widespread use. For several major health care systems, companies such as Microsoft and Oracle manage the technology infrastructure and expand on the COVID-19 vaccine credentialing requirements.
Inequality is another possible pitfall with such a system; anyone will be unable to access a convenient, digital record of their vaccine without a smartphone. However, the Vaccine Credential Initiative says it plans to supply a document printed with a QR code containing the form to such patients.
