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Microsoft and Oracle are helping create digital vaccination cards

Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle are partnering with health care companies to create open-sourced encrypted vaccination cards, commonly called vaccine passports, for those who have received the coronavirus vaccine.

The tech firms have joined up with health-data management companies, including Mitre, Evernorth, Epic and Cerner, as well as the Mayo Clinic and the Commons Project, a tech nonprofit, to create the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI). The group aims to create "Smart Health Cards," with open, interoperable standards that allow everyone access to their vaccination records. This will help people vaccinated against COVID-19 can safely return to work while maintaining their privacy, according to a statement released Thursday.

Users should be able to access their vaccination records through digital wallet apps or a printed QR code under the standards. The VCI's participating health organizations have agreed to provide that data under a standardized framework using "W3C Verifiable Credential and HL7 FHIR standards," according to the statement.

 Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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