Vaccination Credential Initiative

Full Title or Meme

VCI is a consortium of healthcare enterprises lead by MITRE and supported by Microsoft to enable Verifiable Credentials in Healthcare.

Context

• The term credential here is misleading as it is either a certificate or a passport, but not a credential at all. A common problem in 2021.
• Vaccination Credential Initiative has hitched up to the COVID19 bandwagon to show a real life use case in Healthcare.
• The goal is to demonstrate one's health status to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy.
• No sooner than the announcement of this effort was the announcement of the Good Health Pass, which is vaccinations plus testing and other documents that can be used to restore global travel.
• The EU has Guidelines on proof of vaccination for medical purposes basic interoperability elements
• The EU Schengen has stated that a Vaccination Certificate Is a Medical Requirement which is, of course, not really the point of a vaccination certificate, which is focused on access to travel and entry restrictions. In this case even travel within the Schengen area.

SMART Health Cards

A provided by participating testing labs that can be used in:

• Digital wallet apps that adhere to the SMART Health Cards Framework.
• A presentation on Smart Health Cards.
• PDF or paper printed with QR code referring to the SMART Health Cards
• Issuer (e.g., a lab) generates verifiable credentials
• Holder stores credentials and presents them at will
• Verifier receives credentials from holder and ensures they are properly signed (not clear if this is the credential or a Presentation Exchange).

User Experience

• Install a "Health Wallet" app
• Connect the Health Wallet to a lab account
• Save a COVID-19 results card from the lab to the Health Wallet
• When a user wants to share COVID-19 results with a verifier: a) Open Health Wallet b) Scan a QR code displayed by verifier c) Agree when prompted with "Share COVID-19 results with {Verifier Name}?"

Using the Demo

• The Demo is on GitHub with a fork here.
• runs on node.js - version 15 is LTS (Long Term Support) on 2021-01-15
  • First Install nvm = node version manager
    • Open the windows-nvm repository in your internet browser and select the Download Now link.
    • Download the nvm-setup.zip file for the most recent release (or most recent LTS if that is important).
    • Once downloaded, open the zip file, then open the nvm-setup.exe file.
    • The Setup-NVM-for-Windows installation wizard will walk you through the setup steps, including choosing the directory where both nvm-windows and Node.js will be installed.
    • when running nvm install or nvm use, you must have Windows administrative rights (to create symlinks) and you probably want to key: nvm use 15.0.0
• running the following scripts requires a unix shell.

git clone https://github.com/microsoft-healthcare-madison/health-wallet-demo
cd health-wallet-demo

• running in docker does not

docker build -t health-wallet-demo .

References

Other Material

• SMART Health Cards: Vaccination & Testing Implementation Guide on the FHIR web site
• Vaccine Credential Implementation Guide just a place-holder 2021-03-09
• Smart Health IT SMART Health IT was launched with a New England Journal of Medicine article proposing a universal API (application programming interface) to transform EHRs into platforms for substitutable iPhone-like apps.
• Click for details on the FHIR IG effort to introduce medical documentation XML digital signatures to FHIR Immunization Records that can be verified internationally.