New software that's consolidating California's immunization registry went live earlier this month in the Sacramento area and parts of Northern California.
The California Department of Public Health is sponsoring the $11.8 million project, called the California Immunization Registry (CAIR2). The effort is consolidating seven regional registries into the CAIR2 solution and establishing common data exchange standards. The first phase of three-phase rollout launched in early October.
"CAIR2 software is live in Northern California, Greater Sacramento, Central Coast and Inland Empire CAIR regions and more than 5,000 data exchange sites are submitting their data to CAIR2. As expected with a transition this large, there have been a few hiccups with user accounts not migrating properly, but these are currently being fixed," the registry's website announced.
Bay Area and Central Valley users are slated to move onto CAIR2 in December; L.A. and Orange are scheduled to join in March 2017.
CAIR is a secure, Web-based statewide information system where authorized users can track patient immunization records of California residents. In its current form, CAIR is managed by a consortium of nine regions, seven of which are multi-county efforts that use common software. In those seven registries, there are about 20,000 clinical health-care providers using CAIR.
CDPH says CAIR 2.0 has three main goals: consolidate data from the seven CDPH-managed regional CAIR registries; replace the current CAIR software with new CAIR software that supports Health Level Seven International (HL7) data exchange; and connect the single CAIR hub to three other non-CDPH CAIR regional registries to allow statewide patient searches and record retrieval.
In early 2016 California finalized a nearly $2.6 million contract with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services (HPE) for work on CAIR2. HPE was tasked with modifying and installing Wisconsin's immunization registry software as the foundation for CAIR2.
According to the CAIR portal, California law allows health-care providers to share patient immunization information with an immunization registry as long as the patient (or patient’s parent) is informed about the registry. Participation in CAIR is voluntary and is open to health-care providers, schools, child-care facilities, county welfare departments, family child-care homes, foster-care agencies, WIC service providers and health-care plans. Authorized users log in to the registry using a user ID and password.
"In addition to accessing patient immunization information, users can utilize the integrated vaccine algorithm to determine vaccinations due, enter new patients or vaccine doses administered, manage vaccine inventory, run patient or inventory reports, or run reminder/recalls on their patients," the website says.
