Earlier this month, the Immunization Integration Program Collaborative, comprised of leaders representing clinicians, electronic health record (EHR) developers, immunization information systems (IISs), public health and other key stakeholders, identified its top priorities for action in 2020 to improve immunization interoperability, information sharing and management.

Convened by HIMSS, the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA), and Chickasaw Health Consulting, LLC (CHC) under a contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Collaborative engages stakeholders and experts to identify common challenges and drive the development and adoption of solutions that enable both clinicians and IISs to have timely access to complete and accurate immunization data, to not only improve clinical decision-making, but also increase vaccination coverage and reduce vaccine-preventable disease.

During its meeting in February, the Collaborative Executive Committee — co-chaired by David McCormick, Director of the Immunization Division at the Indiana State Department of Health and Stuart Weinberg, MD, Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center — after careful consideration of more than 30 issues, selected four initial areas of focus for 2020. They include:

• Addressing variability in the handling of acknowledgement messages among EHRs, IISs, and clinicians to improve the quality of immunization information used for decision-making;
• Helping to address challenges associated with multiple patients being identified by IISs in response to queries from clinicians through their EHR systems;
• Promoting standardization in transport methods across EHRs and IISs;
• Improving patient identification and matching to support immunization information sharing and management.

Originally published February 27, 2020, updated March 10, 2020