How do I know which vaccinations I have already had? How the vaccination registry works – breaking latest news

Knowing which vaccines we are protected by can be useful when we have a health problem. But it’s not always easy to remember all the vaccinations made during a lifetime. We can access our vaccination recordIt is, in theory, through the electronic health record, which can also be consulted by health service operators in the region of residence. The vaccination diary, however, has not yet been made available by all regions today and must be by 2026, according to the objectives set under the Pnrr. If, on the other hand, for work, study or tourism reasons we find ourselves in a region other than that of residence and we need assistance but we are unable to access our electronic health record (because we do not have the credentials or we are unable to of health), the doctor of the health facility to which we turn cannot for the moment have direct access to our vaccination certificates.

The current situation

Consultation in real time by the healthcare professional of the vaccination diary and of all the other clinical data of the extra-regional patient can be ensured through the interoperability between the regional systems of the Electronic Health Record explains Serena Battilomo, director of the National Health Information System of the Ministry of Health. For now the interoperability function, which more generally concerns the automatic transferability of health documents between regions (for example examination reports and visits carried out outside the region), is almost non-existent but with the funds of the Pnrr in 4 years it will have to become fully operational on everything the national territory. Pending the implementation of the electronic health record, today for health personnel to retrieve the vaccination certificates of a patient residing in another region (who is unable to access his own digital file independently) can be complicated. The attending physician who wants to know if the patient has been vaccinated against tetanus, measles or a type of meningococcus, for example, must call or send an email to the local health authority, which often does not respond and must be re-solicited. Meanwhile, time is wasted and in the uncertainty there is a risk of inappropriate interventions (such as administering the vaccine again or not doing it when the patient does not have immunological coverage). Another thing is the transfer of vaccination data from one region to another in the case of vaccines occasionally carried out outside the region or a change of residence. An activity that is guaranteed on a quarterly basis by the National Vaccine Registry, operational since 2019 (with some critical issues), so that the citizen’s card is always updated with the vaccinations made regardless of the place of administration.

Future developments

A direct dialogue between the National Vaccine Registry and the electronic health record is not envisaged – explains Battilomo -. It is up to the regional vaccination registries to feed the digital file with information on vaccinations. Thanks to the National Registry, it is hoped that by 2023 it will also be possible to automatically calculate the coverage in the population of all mandatory and recommended vaccines, including those against Covid and influenza, at national, regional and local level. The loading of vaccination information referring to individual citizens is still being completed and the alignment of data transmission by the deficient regions declares Battilomo. Until the platform is complete, the coverage percentages continue to be sent by the individual Regions to the general directorate of health prevention of the Ministry of Health for processing and publication, the director continues. The data of the clients, which until now have been collected and transmitted in an aggregated and uneven way, in the national registry are individual and encrypted, i.e. written in the form of an algorithm to guarantee respect for privacy. But each Region can decode the data when it downloads and saves the information relating to the vaccinations administered to its residents in a different region or to acquire the vaccination status card of the citizen who has transferred his residence to that specific Battilomo region. By entering the National Registry, each Region will be able to check their coverage data in real time but not the administrations and non-administrations in the other Regions. We are evaluating whether or not to make the individual regional dashboards usable or simply the national coverage values, perhaps adding the lowest and highest ones without specifying where they were detected, concludes Serena Battilomo. The data is uploaded to the National Registry every three months and concerns: subjects vaccinated, those to be vaccinated, doses and times of administration and subjects for whom vaccines may be omitted or deferred in the event of a proven danger to health.