Vendor talks about immunizations

Last week I received an email from a vendor explaing their support of immunization data. I include a paraphrase of what he wrote because it typifies the perspectives of many vendors:

• Their system supports immunizations.
• They perceive a major disconnect between what individual states are doing, what immunization departments are doing, and what providers are actually doing.
• Doctors are not willing to enter data twice.
• Concerned about how a registry operates and if it would be able to match patient data.

There is a great need to standardize how registries operate such that vendors may understand them well enough to create interfaces for them. Right now vendors are largely ignorant of the needs of providers who give immunizations, especially when it comes to accessing functionality available from the registry.