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Review

Utilizing health information technology to improve vaccine communication and coverage

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Pages 1802-1811 | Received 18 Feb 2013, Accepted 14 May 2013, Published online: 04 Jun 2013
 

Abstract

Vaccination coverage is still below the Healthy People 2010 and 2020 goals. Technology use in the US is widespread by patients and providers including text message, email, internet, social media and electronic health records. Health information technology (IT) interventions can facilitate the rapid or real-time identification of children in need of vaccination and provide the foundation for vaccine-oriented parental communication or clinical alerts in a flexible and tailored manner. There has been a small but burgeoning field of work integrating IT into vaccination interventions including reminder/recall using non-traditional methods, clinical decision support for providers in the electronic health record, use of technology to affect work-flow and the use of social media. The aim of this review is to introduce and present current data regarding the effectiveness of a range of technology tools to promote vaccination, describe gaps in the literature and offer insights into future directions for research and intervention.

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

MSS has no financial disclosure to disclose. AGF is a co-inventor of the “Care Assistant” that provides clinician-focused, point of care decision support. He holds no patent on the software and has earned no money from this invention. No licensing agreement exists.

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