This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the most intelligent robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

  Today in Health it, the story is Vaccine Credential Initiative is gaining steam. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current. I. And engaged. I'm the sponsor for today. I provide executive coaching for health leaders around technology and it.

If you wanna learn more, check out health lyrics.com. All right, here's today's story. This comes from healthcare IT news, vaccine credential projects, gaming, steam worldwide. In the us, the VCI will issue FHIR enabled COVID-19 vaccine certificates on iOS and Android phones and digital wallets and paper-based copies with QR codes to help ensure health equity.

During a HIMSS webinar on Monday, healthcare leaders from the US and Europe offered up close looks at how they're developing and implementing approaches to vaccine credentials. The update came from Dr. Brian Anderson from the US Chief Digital Health Physician. At the Mitre Corporation, he states the main focus when we launched in January was enabling the issuance of these kinds of credentials based on the vaccination administration record itself said Anderson.

And so we focus on the stakeholder engagement with organizations like Major Electronic Health record Technology Partners. That obviously work very closely with health systems and pharmacies here in the United States. The mass vaccination scenario involves, as an example, these two major stakeholder groups as our society progresses through the vaccination process, he noted that it's important to describe what VCI is and what it is not.

It is a voluntary, pro bono effort using open source, freely available standards to enable individuals. To have vaccination credentials on their mobile device or paper-based copies. At Anderson, it's not about identity management. The business logic of whether or not one is safe to enter the identity management, all of those are out of scope for what the initial focus of VCI is all about.

It's really about aligning around an interoperable set of open source specifications to empower individuals. Have access to those credentials with more than 400 organizations from across the private sector now participating, including Cerner Change Healthcare, epic, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.

You get the picture. VCI is working with mobile device manufacturers to support its smart health card. It's an open source based credential on your phone that you can then use with your consent. With the verifier or with the destination as you see fit as an individual who owns that credential, it is meant to be used freely by any stakeholder and available and accessible to individuals for free.

Transparency by design is very important. I'm just hitting some of the highlights here. Equally important is privacy, he said. And so when we went out to build the data elements that go into the smart health card, we took the approach of having the minimal amount of data. While many of these certificates will be stored electronically in smartphones and digital wallets, every member of the VCI commits to also making these kinds of credentials available for printing so that you can have a paper-based, machine readable QR code if you do not have a smartphone or a device that can store this electronically.

Said Anderson part of VCI is ensuring that everyone in our society has access to these credentials and not further increasing any kind of digital divide. After months of work, we're very excited about the growing momentum of what is beginning to be a real issuing of these credentials to individuals at hospitals, clinics, and retail pharmacies here in the United States.

They quote another story. The story essentially says 300 plus members of the VCI announced earlier this month that the verifiable interoperable vaccination record technology they've been working on since January should be generally available in May. The goal of these credentials, of course, is to enable the safe and rapid reopening of our economies.

And our society to enable individuals to be able to go to those places we all want to go and to do so in a safe way. And so at VCI, we're working very closely with many of the major sporting leagues here in the United States, groups like the NBA and others to ensure that the end-to-end use case is as seamless.

And as user-friendly as possible. We're working closely with other organizations in the travel and tourism industry as well as looking to work with many of the restaurants and businesses that we all like to frequent. He said working with destinations is obviously the linchpin in all of this. At the end of the day, they're the ones that are going to be consuming these credentials.

Anderson said VCI is working to harmonize. Its US-based efforts with European Union and the World Health Organization. As well as others internationally. Alright, that's the end of the story. Let me address the so what. As you know, with each one of these stories, we try to answer the question of why does this matter?

Why should we take the time to even look at this? What's the so what? These are really extraordinary times that we live in. First, let me address the effort itself. Kudos. This is a fantastic example of interoperability. At its best. It is an example of a patient-centric interoperability approach. The patient will be the carrier of the record.

I believe it proves that this can be done and the only thing standing between the patient and a complete health record is the paternalistic nature of healthcare. This was well thought out. The project was done well with the right objectives, project framework, collaborative participatory approach that we all knew was possible when healthcare was ready to do this.

So I think this signals that we can do this as an industry for the entire medical record if we wanted to do it. So that's the first thing I get out of this. The second thing is. As far as what happens next in our society, I think you're gonna have two different approaches to reopening. The first one that says, Hey, the vaccine's extremely effective against the virus, and also mitigating the symptoms.

If you happen to get the virus, the impact of the virus on you is far less. If you've been vaccinated. Those who choose not to get the vaccine, even in the face of the evidence, have decided that they want to accept the risk of getting the virus. In those cases, we will see . Places across the country start to open up and slowly take away mask and social distancing guidelines.

If you watch the Wells Fargo Championship, it was a golf championship held in Charlotte last week on tv. You would've noticed that almost no one in the audience was wearing a mask. North Carolina ended its outdoor mask mandate before the tournament started, and they limited capacity to about 30%. This had to be something that the people of California and New York and Pennsylvania who, who tuned into this couldn't completely understand it.

It, it may look like this event was being played on a whole different planet if that's where you live. The second approach will be one that says, I. It's our responsibility to ensure the event, the venue, the sports league. It's, it's our responsibility to create a safe zone for people to enjoy food, travel, and entertainment.

In order to do that, they're going to require proof of vaccination in order to participate in the event. That is where the VCI will come into play. Pull out your phone, show me your credentials. Regardless of how this plays out, I like the VCI project. I think it shows patient-centered interoperability.

Projects are doable when we wanna make them happen, and it's time to make them happen. It's time to engage people in their healthcare by empowering them with their complete medical record. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. You get the picture. . We are everywhere. We wanna thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, VMware Hillrom, Starbridge Advisors, McAfee and Aruba Networks. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.