World First Nation-Wide Surveillance Program for Vaccines

Australia is soon to launch a world-first nation-wide surveillance program, monitoring every vaccine on the national immunisation program (NIP) for early reactions. The program will actively monitor all vaccinations in real time, collecting an extensive amount of data. SmartVax will know where the vaccines are by postcode, the vaccine batch number, and which arm it’s gone into.

SmartVax comes following an investigation into the side effects of Fluvax.

The surveillance program has already monitored more than 1 million vaccinations since 2010, including the highly reactive meningococcal B vaccine Bexsero, across more than 270 GP practices, Indigenous medical centres and hospital immunisation clinics.

So far the system has detected no serious adverse events (such as convulsions, anaphylaxis, or Guillain-Barre syndrome) with fatigue, headache and skin rashes being the bulk of reactions.

Patients sought medical assistance in 0.6 per cent of cases.

How SmartVax works

SmartVax extracts immunisation data from practice software and send a series of SMS messages inquiring if patients have experienced an adverse event. If a patient answers “Yes” a second SMS is triggered.

What’s the data used for?

SMS responses detailing medically attended reactions are flagged to the GP’s software inbox and in some states the local health authority. Monitored in real time, this can act as an early warning signal, enabling improved vaccine safety for all. This is especially important for new vaccines and influenza vaccines, which change formulation every year.

If there is a sudden spike in people visiting their doctors it gives vaccine administrators an opportunity to explore what’s going on.

Patient response rate

During the trial at Illawarra Medical Centre, the SMS response rate was consistently high: over 85% in children and 74% in those over 65 years of age. This is despite the system being technology dependent.

50% of patients responded in the first ten minutes of receiving an SMS and within two hours 80% of responses had been received.

A list of practices using SmartVax can be found here.

SmartVax is currently compatible with:

– Best Practice
– Medical Director
– MedTech32
– ZedMed
– PractiX
– WINVaccs
– ImPS

Other clinical software programs may be added at a later stage.

Click here to read Active surveillance of 2017 seasonal influenza vaccine safety: an observational cohort study of individuals aged 6 months and older in Australia.

SmartVax is in partnership with AusVaxSafety, a national, collaborative active vaccine safety surveillance initiative led by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) and funded by the Australian Government Department of Health.