Vaccine credentials enabling wider progress on public health interoperability

The public and private partnership collaborated on developing a standard model for "trustworthy, traceable, verifiable, and universally recognized digital record of vaccination status" – offering individuals digital access to their vaccination records using the open and interoperable SMART Health Cards specification based on W3C Verifiable Credential and HL7 FHIR standards. While initially developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, those SMART Health Cards – accessible via digital wallet apps or QR codes – were also seen as a key enabler for a larger system to more easily enable access, control and sharing of verifiable vaccination and other records. For instance, VCI is working with state public health authorities about how can they use SMART Health Cards to support all vaccination records, offering individuals secure and verifiable records – not just of COVID-19 vaccination status, "but the typical vaccines that we all get," said Anderson, who noted the potential use case of supporting streamline school enrollment. Toward that end, VCI is now planning to work with the World Health Organization and the G20 on a new international interoperability effort focused on vaccination credentials as the the initial use case – but but with plans to build out a wider interoperability framework using several data exchange specifications that exist across the globe. "When we launched VCI, it was very much rooted in empowering individuals with their health records – the use case absolutely was about vaccination credentials," Anderson added.