Dear Colleague -

The EUVIS (EUrope Vaccines ICT Strategies) project, coordinated by the School of Public Health of the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan (Italy) in collaboration with the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) Sections on Digital Health (EUPHA-DH) and Infectious Diseases Control (EUPHA-IDC), aims at collecting best practices on the use and impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and digital tools to increase vaccine uptake and ultimately vaccination coverage in Europe.

The field of ICT has flourished in recent years revolutionizing the processes of gathering, spreading and utilizing health information among healthcare providers, citizens and mass media. In particular, we are interested in any digital technology that can improve vaccine uptake supporting actions aimed at both increasing the demand of vaccines (i.e. provide access to information through telecommunications, networks, the Internet, wireless, mobile devices) and the supply of effective and efficient life-course immunization services (i.e. ICT-based interventions to support immunization programmes delivery and their monitoring).

Within EUVIS we have conducted systematic reviews to pool available evidence from experimental studies on the impact of ICT-based intervention to improve vaccine uptake and other associated outcomes (1, 2). Here we kindly ask your collaboration to gather useful data on the use and impact of ICT and digital tools within immunization programmes in your country at the national, regional, or local level, as well as to get your expert insight on the potential and challenges in this area.
We anticipate it won’t take more than 20 minutes to fill in the questionnaire.
We would like to thank you in advance for your collaboration

Best wishes,

Anna Odone
President of the EUPHA Digital Health Section
odone.anna@hsr.it

Michael Edelstein
President of the EUPHA Infectious Diseases Control Section
Michael.Edelstein@phe.gov.uk



References:

1. Frascella B, Oradini-Alacreu A, Balzarini F, Signorelli C, Lopalco PL, Odone A. Effectiveness of email-based reminders to increase vaccine uptake: a systematic review. Vaccine. 2020;38(3):433-443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.10.089
2. Balzarini F, Frascella B, Oradini-Alacreu A, Gaetti G, Lopalco PL, Edelstein M, Azzopardi-Muscat N, Signorelli C, Odone A. Does the use of personal electronic health records increase vaccine uptake? A
systematic review, Vaccine, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.05.083