- Patients in Los Angeles County will soon receive digital records of their vaccine that they can store in their Apple Wallet, according to Bloomberg.
- Initially, the digital sign was meant to remind people to come back for their second dose of vaccine, but it could eventually be shown at places like concerts and airports.
- Healthvana, the software company behind the technology, says it speaks to opportunities, schools and airlines.
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People getting a COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles County will soon receive digital reminders that they can place in their Apple Wallets, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
The idea is that the digital token, provided by the software company Healthvana, will remind patients to enter their second dose of the vaccine – but eventually it can be used to gain access to meeting rooms, or airports if they so-called. health passport systems.
“We’re really worried. We really want people to come back for the second dose,” Claire Jarashow, director of disease control against vaccines at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, told Bloomberg.
“We just do not have the ability to make hundreds of medical record requests to find people’s first doses and when they should get their second,” she said.
Los Angeles County recorded nearly 720,000 coronavirus infections during the pandemic, far above the province with the second highest total – Cook County in Illinois, at 385,000 – according to Johns Hopkins University data.
One Los Angeles hospital is so overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients that it is forced to treat people in the gift shop and chapel as cases continue to increase after the holidays, CNN reported Monday.
Healthvana CEO Ramin Bastani told Bloomberg that the digital vaccination record, which could appear in an Apple Wallet or similar Google platform and released this week, would be useful ‘to prove to airlines , to prove to schools, to prove to whoever needs it. He added Healthvana was in talks with concert venues, employers, universities and schools about the application of the technology.
Bastani believes that competitive services to Healthvana’s will emerge as the vaccination widens. “It’s not going to be like one credit card you can use in the US,” he said, adding: “Sometimes you can pay cash, sometimes you can also use your Apple Wallet.”
Bloomberg said Los Angeles County has administered 38,850 doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine, so far focused on health care workers, nursing home residents and paramedics.