JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The prevention and treatment methods for COVID-19 are not yet clear. At present, there are at least 287 preventive vaccines against COVID-19 in the world, of which 5 vaccines are available for emergency use as of June 2021, but none has completed clinical trial. Nevertheless, with the development of vaccines, disease conditions in various countries are gradually controlled.

Objective:

The vaccination rate has increased in time, and activities in various countries have gradually recovered. Therefore, the focus of the next stage is confirming and proving that everyone is vaccinated to ensure that those without vaccines will not become a breach in the next wave of diseases. The vaccination or RT-PCR test results are all certified and verified by paper documents issued by hospitals or testing institutions. Meanwhile, falsified documents are a major risk factor in confirming the vaccination status and laboratory test results. Although the Vaccine Passport (VP) may become an important key to future global activities based on the current strategy, the problems of document verification and data use among countries have not yet been resolved.

Methods:

The blockchain architecture proposed in this research can be applied together by public and private entities and be rapidly expanded. Furthermore, the open ledger of blockchain achieves transparency and data accuracy. On the other hand, smart contracts (SCs) achieve authorization and authentication, while the encryption and decryption mechanisms achieve data protection. In order to make it globally available, the international data standard “Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR)” is adopted into this research. In general, this blockchain architecture can achieve global vaccine passport verification accurately and at a low cost.

Results:

The open nature of the blockchain contributes to establishing transparency and data accuracy. Total three entities are included in this blockchain architecture. All of the authorization are public in the open ledger. The smart certificate enables authorization and authentication, while the encryption and decryption mechanism ensure data protection. This proof of concept demonstrates the design of blockchain architecture which, when adopted, can achieve global vaccine passport verification accurately and at a cost country can afford. An actual vaccine passport case was established and demonstrated in this study. Open blockchain, individually authorized authentication mechanisms, and international standard vaccine passports were adopted.

Conclusions:

Blockchain architecture is used to build the authentication process of an executable international vaccine passport, with advantages of low cost, high interoperability, effectiveness, security and verifiability.