Several companies and technology groups have begun developing applications or systems for smartphones so that individuals can post details of their COVID-19 tests and vaccines, creating digital credentials that could be displayed to enter concert halls, stadiums. , cinemas, offices or even countries. .
The Common Trust Network, an initiative of the Geneva Non-Profit Organization The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum, has partnered with several airlines such as Cathay Pacific, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. , in addition to hundreds of health systems across the United States and the Aruba government.
The CommonPass application created by the group allows users to upload medical data such as a result of the COVID-19 test or, eventually, a vaccination test by a hospital or medical professional, which generates a health certificate or takes shape QR code that can be shown to authorities without revealing sensitive information. For travel, the app lists the health permit requirements at the points of departure and arrival based on your itinerary.
“You can get tested every time you cross a border. You can’t get vaccinated every time you cross a border,” Thomas Crampton, head of marketing and communications at The Commons Project, told CNN Business. He stressed the need for a simple, easily transferable set of credentials, or a “digital yellow card,” referring to the paper document that is usually issued as vaccination proof.
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Large technology companies are also involved. IBM developed its own application, called the Digital Health Pass, which allows companies and sites to customize the indicators they would need for their entry, including coronavirus testing, temperature checks, and vaccination records. The credentials corresponding to these indicators are stored in a mobile wallet.
In an effort to address a challenge related to the return to normalcy after the widespread distribution of vaccines, developers may have to face other challenges, ranging from privacy issues to representing the varied effectiveness of different vaccines. But the most pressing challenge may be to simply avoid the unknown implementation and mixed success of the technology’s previous attempt to address the public health crisis: contact tracking applications.
Early in the pandemic, Apple and Google set aside the rivalry of their smartphones to jointly develop a Bluetooth-based system to notify users if they had been exposed to someone with COVID-19. Many countries and state governments around the world also developed and used their own applications.
“I think the notification of the exposure faced some challenges more than partial implementation options, the lack of federal leadership … where each state had to go it alone and therefore each state had to discover “Independently,” said Jenny Wanger, who leads exposure notification initiatives for the Linux Foundation Public Health, a technology-focused organization that helps public health authorities around the world combat COVID-19.
To encourage better coordination this time around, The Linux Foundation has partnered with the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative, a collective of more than 300 people representing dozens of organizations on five continents and is also working with IBM and CommonPass to help develop a set of universal standards. for vaccine credential applications.
“If we are successful, you should be able to say: I have a vaccination certificate on my phone that I received when I was vaccinated in a country, with a whole set of health management practices … that I used to get on a plane to a completely different country and then I presented in this new country a vaccination credential to be able to go to the concert that was going on inside, where attendance was limited to those who have shown they have had the vaccine, ”Brian said Behlendorf, executive director of the Linux Foundation.
“It has to be interoperable in the same way that email is interoperable, in the same way that the web is interoperable,” he said. “Right now, we’re in a situation where there are some moving parts that are bringing us closer to that, but I think there’s a sincere commitment from the whole industry.”
Part of ensuring widespread use of vaccine passports is to account for the large subset of the world’s population who do not yet use or have access to smartphones. Some companies in the COVID-19 Credentials Initiative are also developing a smart card that reaches a midpoint between traditional paper vaccine certificates and an online version that is easier to store and play.
“It simply came to our notice then [about] “How can these digital credentials be stored, not only through smartphones, but also in other ways for those people who don’t have stable internet access and who don’t own smartphones,” Lucy Yang said. , co-leader of the COVID-19 Credentials initiative. “We are studying it and there are companies that are doing a really promising job.
Once a vaccine passport is built, companies will need to make sure people are comfortable with it. This means addressing concerns about the treatment of private medical information.
CommonPass, IBM and the Linux Foundation have emphasized privacy as a central element of their initiatives. IBM claims that it allows users to control and consent to the use of their health data and allows them to choose the level of detail they want to provide to the authorities.
“Trust and transparency remain paramount when developing a platform such as a digital health passport or any solution that handles sensitive personal information,” the company said in a blog post. “Putting privacy first is an important priority for managing and analyzing data in response to these complex times.”
With vaccines manufactured by various companies in different countries at different stages of development, there are many variables that passport manufacturers will need to consider.
“An entry point (whether it’s a border, whether it’s a place) will want to know, have you received the Pfizer vaccine, have you received the Russian vaccine, have you had the Chinese vaccine, so they can make a decision? accordingly, “Crampton said. The variation can be wide: the vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, for example, is 86% effective against COVID-19, while vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are about 95% effective.
The effectiveness of vaccines in stopping the transmission of the virus is also unclear, says Dr. Julie Parsonnet, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. Therefore, even if a vaccine passport application proves that you received the shot, it may not be a guarantee that you will attend an event safely or that you will be able to fly.
“We still don’t know if vaccinated people can transmit the infection or not,” he told CNN Business. “Until this is clarified, we will not know if the ‘passports’ will be effective.”
However, Behlendorf expects the launch and adoption of vaccine passports to happen quickly once everything is in place and expects a large number of applications that can work with each other to be “widely available” during the first half of 2021.
“Calm down, the nerds are there,” he said.
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