FRIDAY, Feb. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Immunization information systems (IIS) that consolidate vaccination data from different health care providers and can be used to remind and recall patients are becoming more widely used by vaccination grantees, according to an article published in the Feb. 12 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
J. Kelly, of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in Atlanta, and colleagues write that the CDC has a goal of over 95 percent of children under 6 years of age participating in an IIS with at least two recorded vaccinations. The CDC conducts an annual survey of immunization grantees nationwide and the researchers looked at 2008 data.
By 2008, 75 percent of all American children had participated in an IIS, a 10 percent improvement over the figure for 2006, the researchers note. Whereas in 2006, only 70 percent of grantees had an IIS in place that could track the immunization records of all patients, by 2008 this had climbed to 82 percent.
"Increased provider use of electronic health record systems can benefit IIS and their users by producing immunization records that are more timely and complete," the authors write.
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