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Is that proof of a vaccine in your wallet?
If a sports venue or theater will one day require customers to prove they have been vaccinated against Covid-19 before allowing entry, how will they do it
A company between the most populous county in the US and a tech startup called Healthvana may offer a clue.
Under the program, vaccine recipients in Los Angeles County, a hot spot for the virus, will be offered a digital record that will help ensure they receive a second vaccine. Initially, it is geared toward ensuring that people receive both doses of the two-shot regimen through text messages and other prompts.
But it will also give recipients a way to verify that they have been vaccinated, which they can put in an Apple Wallet or a competing Google platform “to demonstrate to airlines, to schools, to whoever needs it,” he said. Healthvana Chief Executive Director Ramin Bastani.
Los Angeles-based Healthvana, founded in late 2014, runs a software platform that delivers test results to patients for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. It began working with the county earlier this year to provide the Covid-19 test results.
Those past relationships with area residents made the startup a good option for digital vaccine registration, said Claire Jarashow, director of vaccine-preventable disease control at the county’s Department of Public Health.
Los Angeles County last week broke its record for new deaths and hospitalizations from Covid-19. It has been a race to distribute vaccines “as quickly as humanly possible,” Jarashow said.
While vaccines are recorded in registries, public health officials also saw the need to give patients ownership of their own records, Jarashow said. They will receive a paper card that tracks which vaccine they received and when. But of course, a card can be easily lost, which is where digital records come into play.
Tracking Covid-19 vaccine recipients and authenticating immunization status is poised to become increasingly important in the US and globally as vaccines are released.
That sparked a race among players like IBM to provide technology solutions, envisioning a world in which vaccination records can be used to grant access to places where people can meet or be very close. With private medical records involved, those efforts have also raised questions.
Jarashow said the county has resolved the issues of granting a private company access to its residents’ protected health information. Healthvana stores the data on Amazon Web Services servers that comply with federal regulations, according to Bastani, the CEO.
“It’s as safe as we can make it,” Jarashow said. “I would feel comfortable using it, so I hope it’s reassuring.”
Healthvana is also in talks with concert venues, employers, universities and schools, “anyone who has a lot of people interacting with them,” about applying the technology, Bastani said.
“It’s not going to be like a credit card that you can use all over the United States,” he said. “Sometimes you can pay in cash, sometimes you can use your Apple Wallet.”Emma court
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