Canadian Medical Association Develops Panorama For Collecting Vaccination Data

Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 04 Jan 2010 - 12:00 PDT

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The collection of individual level vaccination data when delivering vaccines is important for planning and delivery of immunization programs, to assess whether population-level coverage has been achieved and for research into vaccine safety and effectiveness, states an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Canada has been developing Panorama, a national electronic system that will "collect, analyse and disseminate public health surveillance data for the management of infectious diseases" according to Dr. Jeff Kwong and coauthors from the Public Health Agency of Canada/Canadian Institutes of Health Research Influenza Research Network Vaccine Coverage Theme Group. Panorama will include an immunization registry that will help in responding to public health emergencies and vaccination efforts.

However, not every province and territory will adopt the new system which will have a staggered rollout between 2010 and 2012. Potential barriers to collecting electronic data include funding to implement and maintain immunization registries, coordinating data collection from various health care providers, ensuring patient privacy and data security as well as human reluctance to adopt new technologies.

Source
Canadian Medical Association Journal

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