Slovenia launches EU Digital COVID Certificate for its two million citizens
Slovenia has launched its EU Digital COVID Certificate, a Digital Green Certificate, which was developed in three weeks and is powered by EHR data solution, Better Platform.
The service generates a certificate based on the data available in Slovenia’s national CDR.
This rapid development of a citizen certificate was made possible by an open-platform approach, which was adopted by Slovenia and separated the data from the application.
The certificate document is available in digital or PDF form, with QR codes.
WHY IT MATTERS
The EU Digital Covid Certificate solution uses integrated care record data, including, demographic data, vaccination data, and test result data, which is already available in the Central Registry of Patient Data (CRPD).
The data is made available through previously established services by the national COVID-19 screening data management solution and the national eVaccination registry, with no need for additional data to be generated solely for certificate purposes.
The pandemic accelerated the need for national health systems to develop digital solutions for health and care services, manage epidemiological data, and organise COVID-19 tests and vaccinations. The EU Digital COVID Certificate was developed within three weeks in order to allow citizens to travel safely this summer.
The Slovenian healthcare system has a national eHealth infrastructure which currently contains:
- more than 150 million health records for 2.1 million unique individuals (98% of the population);
- eighty-six percent (135 million) of records in the form of structured data that uses openEHR models, with 63% of records being the core data set, or patient summary data (diagnoses, surgical procedures, vaccinations, allergies, dispensed medication, and more);
- four million records of Covid-19 screening (test) results;
- unstructured data that includes discharge summaries, clinical notes, opt-in statements, consent documents and other clinical data;
- data which is sent to the national system by more than 1,250 registered healthcare providers in Slovenia;
- a large number of queries, as, on average, healthcare providers trigger almost 10 million queries or “retrieve calls” per month.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
In March, European leaders called for EU-wide vaccine passports as a ‘matter of urgency.’ The Digital Green Certificate was planned to be interoperable and non-discriminatory.
Last month, the European Union Digital COVID certificates (EUDCC) was issued to citizens in 17 countries.
Member states are obliged to start issuing the first certificates within six weeks of 1 July, when the EU Digital COVID Certificate Regulation enters into application.
As nightclubs are reopening in England, ministers have expressed the need for “higher risk” settings to make use of the NHS Covid Pass, which can prove whether an individual has been fully vaccinated.
ON THE RECORD
Minister of Health of the Republic of Slovenia, Janez Poklukar, said: “We are happy that we already had the suitable IT infrastructure in place in Slovenia. It allowed us to respond quickly and provide the necessary digital solutions that support the efforts of medical and epidemiological teams to manage the pandemic, as well as to allow our citizens to travel freely.”
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