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The Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR) was a national data register, established in 1996, that records details of vaccinations given to children under seven years of age who live in Australia and are enrolled in Medicare.

The Immunisation Register in the Australian context

From 30 September 2016, the ACIR expanded to become the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR), a national register that records vaccinations given to people of all ages in Australia.

The AIR is administered by the Department of Human Services. It records vaccinations administered through general practice and community clinics which includes vaccines funded under the National Immunisation Program and privately funded vaccinations.

Context in digital health

When a consumer registers for access to their Medicare information through their digital health record, the Department of Human Services will register the consumer’s Medicare CDA [RY1]  documents in the  record, including details from the AIR. The Medicare CDA documents will be created by the Department of Human Services as the sole supplier of Medicare information within the My Health Record system.

The consumer, and healthcare providers with access to the consumer’s Medicare information, will be able to retrieve the AIR CDA document through the consumer’s digital health record. Additionally, the data items in the AIR document will be loaded into My Health Record to be used as a source of data for the consumer’s Medicare overview.

There are a number of key business flows that occur within digital health in Australia, as outlined in Figure 1 below.

Immunisations Diagram

Figure 1: Australian Childhood Immunisation Register high-level overview

These flows are described below:

  1. A vaccination provider records the consumer’s immunisations or reasons for not being immunised in the Department of Human Services system.
  2. The system uploads the immunisation records as part of the ACIR document to the consumer’s My Health Record.
  3. ACIR records can be retrieved by the consumer or clinicians on My Health Record.

 

Feature specifications

The Australian Digital Health Agency has provided the following specifications that apply to the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register described above:

Related specifications

Roadmap

Roadmap: 
January, 2015
Completed
This release is for clinical information system vendors who are designing and developing systems to parse, extract, and process information contained in the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register CDA documents retrieved from the PCEHR system using the business-to-business (B2B) gateway. When an individual registers for access to their Medicare information through their personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR), the Department of Human Services can register the individual’s Medicare CDA documents in their PCEHR, including their Australian Childhood Immunisation Register entries. The data items in the Medicare documents will be loaded into the PCEHR system to be used as a source of data for the individual’s Medicare Overview. The Medicare CDA documents will be created by the Department of Human Services as the sole supplier of Medicare information within the PCEHR system. The individual, and healthcare providers with access to the individual’s Medicare information will be able to retrieve the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register CDA document through the individual’s PCEHR.