NR512 Health IT – Use of COVID-19 Vaccines as Vaccine Passports

NR512 Health IT – Use of COVID-19 Vaccines as Vaccine Passports
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April 6, 2021
Understanding the importance of Information Technology (IT) in the healthcare practice is essential for any healthcare provider. It allows him to have a deeper appreciation of technology's impact in this constantly developing field and apply them in his future practices. Accordingly, this article would focus on the use of "vaccine passports" as an emerging technology in today's healthcare field. Notably, the author would like to focus on explaining its importance, its impact in the healthcare practice, and how such technology could be leveraged in the healthcare field in the coming future. All in all, the author believes that having more excellent knowledge about these emerging fields in Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) improves the capability of the healthcare system to deal with the Pandemic and even after the post-pandemic period.
Rationale
The COVID-19 Pandemic has undoubtedly taken a toll on the healthcare system's capacity to provide adequate healthcare response. Whether it be in the number of resources, the ability of its human resources or the capacity to contain the virus, most healthcare systems around the world have exceeded their capacity due to the severe increase in hospitalization rates brought about by the Pandemic CITATION Bru201 \l 1033 (Brunier, 2020). However, now that vaccines are already available to counter this spread, the next challenge for the healthcare system is finding a way to ensure that society can be allowed to return to 'normalcy' without risking continuous spread to those who are yet to be vaccinated. Accordingly, the author believes that this is where vaccine passports come in.
Generally speaking, vaccine passports are applications/software that provide details about individuals' 'vaccination status' (Hall & Studdert, 2021). These digital signatures or certificates would allow institutions to ascertain whether an individual is already vaccinated or not, thereby curtailing the further spread of the disease while also allowing mobility for those already immune to the disease. Accordingly, this ability to gradually allow society to return to 'normalcy' through HIT systems is the reason why the author has chosen to focus on this topic.
IBM's Vaccine Passports
Today, IBM is already developing vaccine passports based on blockchain technology called 'Excelsior Pass' CITATION Fie21 \l 1033 (FierceHealthcare.com, 2021). Interestingly, the HIT application in development focuses on various aspects such as security, verifiability, and privacy.
Security and Verifiability
On the one hand, IBM's Excelsior pass provides security and verifiability since it uses blockchain technology in its core processes. As compared to traditional databases, blockchain technology is secure since its database is located not in a single location but in a series of 'nodes,' thereby making it secure from hacking. Accordingly, this is why blockchain technology finds a lot of application in the healthcare system since security and accuracy of data are crucial for the proper delivery of healthcare (Khezr et al., 2019).
Going back to its intended usage during an...