Māori and Pacific providers to use new immunisation register this flu season

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Māori and Pacific community providers are being prioritised for onboarding onto the new Aotearoa Immunisation Register (AIR) in preparation for the 2023 flu season.

Providers of flu vaccinations, such as occupational health and lead maternity carers, are also being invited to sign up to use the AIR and other parts of the sector will be invited to adopt it as functionality is added.

The new register provides a single source of truth for a person’s vaccination records and gives Kiwis a way to record and track all the of immunisations they have received and are entitled to.

It is being delivered in four phases and co-designed with health providers with a strong emphasis on engaging with Māori and Pacific providers.

A pilot in late 2022 with a small number of Māori community providers involved them using the AIR vaccinator portal to record adult MMR vaccinations, in order to test the system and provide feedback on future requirements.

You’ve read this article for free, but good journalism takes time and resource to produce. Please consider supporting eHealthNews by becoming a member of HiNZ, for just $17 a month.

The vaccinator portal allows vaccinators working outside of general practice to record vaccinations and view vaccination history in the AIR, National Immunisation Register (NIR) and the Covid-19 Immunisation Register (CIR).

The AIR will replace the NIR and the CIR by the end of this year.

Pharmacists have been invited to sign up for the vaccinator portal since December 2022 and the ImmuniseNow portal, currently used by pharmacy, will also be fully replaced this year.

Michael Dreyer, group manager and chief technology officer, national digital services, says a digital channel for consumers to access their own immunisation records is on track to be launched as a public beta from April 2023. This will evolve over the year to include the ability for whānau to view their dependents immunisation records.

“Once the service for parents to add children under 12 in My Health Account becomes available, parents will also be able to see the vaccine history of children who have been added through My Health Account,” he says.

“This will be an exciting step towards consumers having visibility and control over their health information, building upon the design and technology built to support the Covid-19 response.”

The fourth phase of developing the AIR is the largest and involves implementing the ‘Immunisation Source of Truth (ImmSOT)’. This means migrating data from the current NIR, and connecting existing systems (including GP and other third-party systems), to the AIR. 

The Aotearoa Immunisation Register is being built on Salesforce with AWS for the data store and backend functionality and Mulesoft to enable integration between system components and for integration with external parties.

Dreyer says several companies have been engaged to support the delivery of the AIR across these technologies including Merkle, Fronde and Circini.

He says the AIR will provide a more accurate understanding of population immunisation coverage rates.

“This means programmes can be planned better to support populations with the lowest immunisation rates.  It will also reduce digital barriers and support the health sector to deliver better immunisation services,” he says.

Picture: Power up: East Coast nurse, Gina Chaffey-Aupouri with Campbell Dewes (Ngāti Porou, Te Arawa) at the pop-up Covid-19 vaccine clinic in Hinerupe Marae on the East Cape. Photo by Josie McClutchie.

To comment on or discuss this news story, go to the eHealthNews category on the HiNZ eHealth Forum

Read more National Systems & Strategy news

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page