Currently submitted to: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Jun 21, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 2, 2026 - Aug 27, 2026
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Online Verification of Dynamic Vaccination Records: Design and Deployment of Thailand's Electronic Vaccination Certificate System
ABSTRACT
Background:
Proof of COVID-19 vaccination became essential for international travel during the pandemic. However, the design of digital vaccination certificates must balance data integrity, availability, confidentiality, usability, and national operational requirements.
Objective:
This study describes the design and nationwide implementation of Thailand’s electronic vaccination certificate system and examines how frequently updated vaccination records, local health information infrastructure, and information-security requirements informed its online verification architecture.
Methods:
The system was designed to support secure issuance and verification of vaccination records using standardized data formats, digital signatures, and QR-code–based access. Rather than embedding all vaccination data in an offline QR code, Thailand adopted an online verification model in which the QR code links to an authoritative and digitally signed record.
Results:
The online approach supported frequently updated vaccination records, including additional and heterologous booster doses, without requiring a new QR code for each update. The platform was deployed nationwide to support certificate issuance and international verification. It improved operational efficiency through automated data import and continued to be adapted for other travel-related vaccination requirements, including Hajj pilgrimage travel.
Conclusions:
The Thailand case demonstrates that the design of digital vaccination credentials should be guided not only by technical standards but also by the dynamics of vaccination data, national health information infrastructure, and cross-border usability requirements. Online verification architectures may be particularly suitable where vaccination records are frequently updated and where reliable access to authoritative data can be maintained.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.