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Monitoring the COVID-19 immunisation programme through a national immunisation Management system – England's experience

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    23 Citations (Scopus)
    183 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Background: In England routine vaccinations are recorded in either the patients General Practice record or in series of sub-national vaccine registers that are not interoperable. During the COVID-19 pandemic it was established that COVID vaccines would need to be delivered in multiple settings where current vaccine registers do not exist. We describe how a national vaccine register was created to collect data on COVID-19 vaccines. 

    Methods: The National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) was developed by a range of health and digital government agencies. Vaccinations delivered are entered on an application which is verified by individual National Health Service number in a centralised system. UKHSA receive a feed of this data to use for monitoring vaccine coverage, effectiveness, and safety. To validate the vaccination data, we compared vaccine records to self-reported vaccination dose, manufacturer, and vaccination date from the enhanced surveillance system from 11 February 2021 to 24 August 2021. 

    Results: With the Implementation of NIMS, we have been able to successfully record COVID-19 vaccinations delivered in multiple settings. Of 1,129 individuals, 97.8% were recorded in NIMS as unvaccinated compared to those who self-reported as unvaccinated. One hundred percent and 99.3% of individuals recorded in NIMS as having at least one dose and two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were also self-reported as having at least one and two doses, respectively. Of the 100% reporting at least one dose, 98.3% self-reported the same vaccination date as NIMS. A total of 98.8% and 99.3% had the same manufacturer information for their first dose and second dose as that which was self-reported, respectively. 

    Discussion: Daily access to individual-level vaccine data from NIMS has allowed UKHSA to estimate vaccine coverage and provide some of the world's first vaccine effectiveness estimates rapidly and accurately.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number104974
    JournalInternational Journal of Medical Informatics
    Volume170
    Early online date23 Dec 2022
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information: There was no external funding for this study.

    Open Access: This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
    (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

    Publisher Copyright: Crown Copyright © 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V

    Citation: Elise Tessier, Michael Edelstein, Camille Tsang, Freja Kirsebom, Charlotte Gower, Colin N.J. Campbell, Mary Ramsay, Joanne White, Nick Andrews, Jamie Lopez-Bernal, Julia Stowe, Monitoring the COVID-19 immunisation programme through a national immunisation Management system – England’s experience,
    International Journal of Medical Informatics, Volume 170, 2023, 104974, ISSN 1386-5056, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104974.

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104974.

    UN SDGs

    This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

    1. SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
      SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being

    Keywords

    • COVID-19
    • Immunisation(s)
    • Vaccine coverage
    • Vaccine registry
    • Vaccine uptake
    • Vaccine(s)

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