The electronic vaccination card has been available in Switzerland for ten years, but it has not yet really caught on. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided an unexpected late growth spurt. Until the platform went offline on March 23, 2021 – due to privacy concerns.
Registering your vaccinations on meineimpfungen.ch and thus being in possession of an electronic vaccination card has theoretically been possible since 2011. However, the offer was little used over many years. In 2018, the number of electronic vaccination booklets was a meager 150,000 despite an awareness campaign in physicians’ offices [1]. The Corona vaccination breathed new life into the project – in fact, from January to March, user numbers increased rapidly [2]. At least with regard to its goal of making electronic vaccination documentation the norm, the pandemic played into the hands of the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). The idea of soon having access to concerts, fitness centers or foreign countries thanks to electronically documented Corona vaccination may have motivated one or the other to register on meineimpfungen.ch. By March 23, 2021, access to the platform was no longer possible, for data protection reasons or due to “urgent maintenance,” as the website stated.
A look behind the scenes
Behind meineimpfungen.ch is the non-profit foundation meineimpfungen, whose board of trustees is made up of three organizations. Represented are the University of Geneva, the Medical Insurance Fund and Arpage, a company active in the field of eHealth [3]. The project is partly financed by the FOPH and to a large extent by donations and sponsors – including the pharmaceutical industry, which contributes about 20% of the total budget [2]. While information on funding is hard to come by, something immediately catches your eye when you visit the website: you immediately feel like you’ve been transported back ten years.
But contemporary layout or not, the advantages of recording vaccinations electronically are obvious and go far beyond ensuring readability. An electronic vaccination card is always with you and cannot be lost, which prevents unnecessary double vaccinations. Checking vaccination status for completeness or clarifying vaccination requirements before a trip is easy. Last but not least, the physician’s workload can be reduced through more efficient, automated management with reminder functions. This is exactly what meineimpfungen.ch promises – with guaranteed data security according to the operators.
Data protection in our sights
After the first critical voices were raised at the beginning of the year expressing concerns about data protection, the accusations became so great at the end of March that the operators took the platform offline. The risk of false vaccination records was too high, IT experts said [4]. And the Federal Data Protection Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger initiated proceedings. Even if the meineimpfungen foundation continues to stand behind its product, the Corona-related growth is now likely to be abruptly curbed. A quick reaction to close the security gaps is probably indispensable for the survival of the platform and will at best be able to cushion the image damage.
In addition to data protection problems, the composition of the board of trustees and the lack of transparency in funding are currently causing red faces in many places. Because there is no trace of patient and consumer protectors here. Yesterday’s layout is thus a comparatively small problem, and the operators’ to-do list is long if work is to continue on the basis of the application.
Unclear future
The electronic vaccination certificate, which has long been promoted by the FOPH, has been received with reluctance in doctors’ practices in recent years. However, with the media attention, the high demand for proof of vaccination in the context of the pandemic, and the general trend towards digitization, the pressure is now increasing to offer a corresponding product – be it based on meineimpfungen.ch or an alternative approach. Experience shows that such a project could be difficult without the support of practicing physicians. And in order to maintain this, in addition to guaranteed security and transparency, one thing is needed above all else: User-friendliness. After all, the introduction of an electronic vaccination card not only creates many opportunities for practices, but also additional expenses, at least – and ideally only – initially.
The training courses and fact sheets from meineimpfungen.ch already suggest as much: Here, too, there is clear potential for improvement. Some practice software already has interfaces for importing relevant data to make work easier.
As bitter as the abrupt interruption of the platform’s rapid growth may be, it also offers many opportunities. Because even if meineimpfungen.ch has not withstood the pandemic for the time being, the concern to enable a secure and user-friendly electronic proof of vaccination has nevertheless gained weight again. The security concerns create an opportunity to consider alternative providers and forms, and to give the somewhat dusty-looking platform a proper spring cleaning – even behind the scenes. Let’s hope that the new focus can make a solid contribution to safe, long-overdue digitization in healthcare.
Literature:
- Media release: Electronic vaccination card: growing number of users. Federal Office of Public Health FOPH. 23.04.2018.
- Wacker G: Vaccination against Corona – The operators of the electronic vaccination passport are under criticism. SRF Echo of Time. 08.01.2021.
- Renate B: Vaccinate correctly and completely. Pediatrics. 2017.
- SRF Tagesschau from 23.3.21
InFo ONCOLOGY & HEMATOLOGY 2021; 9(2): 44 (published 10/4/21, ahead of print).
DERMATOLOGY PRACTICE 2021; 31(2): 32
