The World Health Organization (WHO) has selected the PathCheck Foundation to support its effort to ease the process for its member states to implement digital vaccination certification. In August of 2021, WHO proposed Digital Documentation of COVID-19 Certificates as a mechanism by which a person’s COVID-19-related health data can be digitally documented via an electronic certificate. WHO has selected PathCheck to build the organization’s reference implementation of a Universal Verifier application that can be extended and published by 194 member states.
“Throughout the pandemic, PathCheck has been steadfast in its mission to respond through privacy-preserving, digital applications,” said Graham Dodge,
president. “The exposure notification and vaccination tracking applications we have deployed in several states throughout the US have proven that digital technologies can be leveraged to fight epidemiological threats. We are thrilled to have been selected by WHO and are looking forward to getting to work.”
Historically, paper-based vaccination records have presented many challenges – such as the possibility of losing or damaging the card, or in some cases, fraud. Digital vaccination certificates will give member states the opportunity to conduct a thorough risk assessment, tailor effective health care to citizens, as well as provide a digital tool for citizens to use for proof of vaccination. Digital certificates will give member states flexible solutions that are best suited to their needs while supporting the needs of individuals who may be local or visiting.
The reference application being built by PathCheck will focus on a privacy-preserving, decentralized and verifiable way to issue, hold and share medical information, including vaccination events, test results, and covid status. The Universal Verifier is interoperable with all COVID-related QR codes deployed and currently supports 1,153 private and public issuers, including the Smart Health Cards for the US and Canada, the European DCC, the DIVOC for India and the Philippines, and ICAO for Australia and Japan. PathCheck's Universal Verifier is the first and currently the only app that can be used to read and share all COVID credentials worldwide. The entire project is available to the public as an opensource on the developer platform GitHub.
Building digital tools for pandemic response is not new territory for the PathCheck Foundation. In the beginning of the pandemic, the PathCheck Foundation partnered with the CDC and WHO to create a contact tracing app that preserved privacy within an open-source framework. Immediately, PathCheck became the world’s largest nonprofit open-sourced project for COVID-19 contact tracing and vaccine passport solutions. It has become the official app in five US states and territories and is supported by over three thousand volunteers around the world.