A cross-section of companies in the travel, technology and health
sectors have founded the Good Health Pass Collaborative, with the goal
of creating a blueprint for interoperable digital health pass systems.
"Various efforts are currently underway to develop digital health
credentials systems -- both vaccination and test certificates -- for
international travel. Yet, despite this race to market, it is unlikely
that a single solution will be implemented universally, or even across
the entire travel industry," the organization said. "Thus, it is
critical that solutions are designed from the onset to be interoperable,
both with one another and across institutional and geographic borders."
The collaborative has 25 members, including several digital health
pass developers. Those include the Commons Project Foundation ,
developer of CommonPass; Evernym, which is partnering in development of
the IATA Travel Pass; IBM; Daon, which developed the Verifly health pass
app being used by American and Alaska airlines; Clear; and the
International Chamber of Commerce, which is developing the AOKpass.
Other members of the collaborative include Mastercard, Airports
Council International and foundations that advocate for the building of
platforms related to secure digital identities.
The organization was founded by ID2020, a New York-based nonprofit
that advocates for ethical, privacy-protecting approaches to digital
IDs.
• Related: Flyers must show Covid tests, but how? Let us count the ways
Widespread use of digital health passes, which enable travelers to securely present records of Covid-19 test results and vaccinations, is viewed by the global travel sector as a key to reopening international travel.
However, there is concern that a fragmented landscape will emerge in
which individual airlines, other transport providers and border
checkpoints themselves are siloed off, each working with specific
technologies that may not communicate with one another. Such a state of
affairs could result in a confusing ecosystem in which travelers would
have to link testing or vaccination documents to separate apps,
depending upon which airline they are flying or which country they are
entering.
Travel Weekly is aware of 15 heath passports that have been launched or are in development.
In response to such concerns, a group of healthcare and technology
providers established the Vaccination Credential Initiative last month
with a goal of "empowering individuals with digital access to their
vaccination records based on open, interoperable standards."
Good Health Pass Collaborative has a similar goal, except that it extends beyond vaccination records.
"Fragmentation is a risk we simply cannot ignore," ID2020 executive
director Dakota Gruener said. "To be valuable to users, credentials need
to be accepted at check-in, upon arrival by border control agencies,
and more. We can get there even with multiple systems as long as
solutions adhere to open standards and participate in a common
governance framework."