- Your initial research idea and your current research idea. IF there are changes, tell us how they are different and why. What led you to change your focus.
I was thinking and looking into my research idea and thought maybe I was going to have a hard time tracking COVID and tracking the COVID vaccine and might have too much to cover. I think I will just cover how facilities are keeping track of who they gave the vaccine to and when. Anybody can say they have had COVID and tested positive for it (Even if they have not) but knowing when and if they received the vaccine could be potentially important for travel and other events.
- What do you want to find out in your research area?
As more people are getting vaccinated, it is important that there is a streamlined method in which different facilities can record COVID vaccine records that will be both easy to access and consistent between different systems. Also, are individuals providing fraudulent vaccine cards and how can this be avoided?
- Have you already found research related to your idea? If so, what is that research?
It has been difficult to find information about this topic as most everything that comes up related to the vaccine itself and the effectiveness. However, I did find a couple articles so far that describe how the vaccine starts and ends in documentation.
“The Immunization Information Systems (IIS) are a group of privacy preserving database systems that track all vaccinations within various areas (for Disease Control (CDC))” (Bae et al., 2021).
Bae, J., Sukumaran, R., Shankar, S., Srivastava, S., Iyer, R., Mahindra, A., … Raskar, R. (2021, January 21). MIT SafePaths Card (MiSaCa): Augmenting Paper Based Vaccination Cards With Printed Codes. Cornell University. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07931.s
“As more of the population get vaccinated, methods of assessing and confirming vaccination status become increasingly important for the relaxation of certain public health measures and shutdowns for Disease Control & Prevention (2020c). Therefore, before policies dependent on immunization status can be enacted, secure, fraud-resistant methods must be developed to confirm that an individual has been vaccinated” (Mobile Apps, 2021).
Bae, J., Sukumaran, R., Shankar, S., Sharma, A., Singh, I., Nazir, H., … Raskar, R. (2021, February 9). Mobile Apps Prioritizing Privacy, Efficiency and Equity: A Decentralized Approach to COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination. Cornell University. https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.09372.
“Another advantage is the ease of verification, since it is a public digital ledger run by the government, it provides quick and trusted verification across borders” (Bansal et al., 2020).
Bansal, A., Garg, C., & Padappayil, R. P. (2020). Optimizing the Implementation of COVID-19 “Immunity Certificates” Using Blockchain. Journal of Medical Systems, 44(9). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-020-01616-4
- Peruse Forsyth Library Databases and/or our library guid to identify at least three databases you could use to begin your search for related research.
Because of the information that I need, I can get some valuable data from the CDC website along with google scholar for more recent and valuable articles that pertain to my research topic. I also had a lot of luck on the Cornell University website to find articles for this topic as well. Most all of my articles gave me different sides of the implementation process and how each place is taking the security measures to prevent fraudulent vaccination cards.
Hi Kelsie. I like your discussion topic and look forward to reading what you discovered especially when it comes to fraudulent data. I personally have already read that fraudulent information has already been submitted in many countries besides the US. I also know that the US and other countries have misreported all of the covid-19 deaths. I cant say with a shadow of a doubt if it was done on purpose but the last US Government Administration before Mr. Bidden already lied about many details related to Covid-19. Hopefully this will not happen with regards to vaccination data. Falsifying this type of information will not only hurt the US but will cause great harm when people travel to other countries. Many countries at this point believe the US is leading the way on vaccinations and don’t require negative covid-19 results any longer as they did 4 months ago. I know for fact because I’ve traveled outside the US in the last few months. Great Topic !
Hey Kelsie. I think your slight change in topic is for the best. I also like that you are looking into fraudulent vaccine cards. I would be curious what legal backing any enforcement agencies would have against this type of thing. Not saying that your research needs to include those agencies or the law itself, I was just thinking if you could figure out which agency that would fall under, then they might provide statistics in the future on what they are doing.
Great post, Kelsie!
I imagine that you have some suggestions for keeping records and facilitating the access of records. You might consider who will need to access these records (airline employees, airport security personnel, large event coordinators, etc.). While we’re protecting privacy in accordance with HIPA, it might be nice to have a website that people can connect to, where they can print out a document certifying that they have received the vaccine. They could then present this document to access travel options and events. Here in France, people can access a police records website and order a document revealing their criminal history. The document then comes in the mail, and they can present it to potential employers. This document is used widely to ensure that childcare workers are not axe murderers. Perhaps something like this might be legal and effective for the COVID situation.