A coalition of health and technology businesses, including Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle are working together on a project that intends to make it easier for people to access their Covid-19 vaccination records digitally. As more people begin to get vaccinated against Covid, they may need to have proof that they are vaccinated so they are able to return to work, school, or travel, and having easy access to a digital vaccination record could help with this. The program is referred to as the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI).

The vision of VCI is to empower individuals to obtain an encrypted digital copy of immunisation credentials to store this information in a digital wallet of their preference. VCI explains that they are working to make the credentials using SMART Health Cards criteria, which enables people to store immunisation or laboratory results in a digital wallet.

A recent press release from VIC doesn’t include a timeline as to when organisations administering the vaccines will be able to generate these records, so it remains a little unclear when one can be added to a digital wallet. Residents in the US are already receiving paper cards recording their vaccines and it’s a little unclear how these records can be transferred to a digital version.

Another potential challenge is encouraging health facilities to participate in the project, as some provider may have the ability to incorporate these services into the vaccination process, but others may not. There are other ethical concerns about whether a person that can prove they are vaccinated should be given more freedom than others that are not vaccinated.

VCI isn’t’ the first coalition to consider a digital Covid-19 vaccination record system. Other projects are being tested based on existing vaccine documents required by some countries for entry, such as yellow fever or polio.