Decentralized Open Platform for Vaccination—A German Example: COVID-19-Vacc

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has massively impacted the health of many people worldwide and poses significant challenges for our social, economic, and political life. Global vaccination should help the world overcome the pandemic and return to a “normal” life. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of Health presented its “National Vaccination Strategy COVID-19”, which describes the primary actors, elements, and activities required for the immunization of the German population. However, the implementation is challenging due to the federal organization of the German state in sixteen federal states. While essential processes such as vaccination rate monitoring and surveillance are planned centrally, the sixteen federal states are responsible for implementing the vaccination strategy in a decentralized manner. Furthermore, the European General Data Protection Regulation (EU-GDPR) imposes strict rules for processing and exchanging personal data. However, Germany is only a case in point. Governmental decisions always need to be implemented by regional and/or local actors, the number of which varies greatly depending on the country. This work addresses these challenges by proposing the COVID-19-Vacc Platform—an open and decentralized digital platform focused on vaccinations as a matter of example. The proposed platform model connects various actors and enables them to involve, conduct, and track the vaccination process while meeting all necessary data protection and security requirements defined by EU-GDPR. Using the DMS Reference Model as the theoretical framework, the blueprint of the COVID-19-Vacc Platform is developed, outlining the platform’s ecosystem structure, its interactions process model, and the service stack, defining how the proposed platform works on the operational level. Our COVID-19-Vacc Platform may help facilitate a fast and EU-GDPR compliant implementation of COVID-19 vaccination strategies. Beyond that, the proposed open and decentralized platform model might facilitate international interconnectivity and therefore the management of emerging global pandemics or other global health-related crisis.