Epic leader talks EHRs, and how they're helping with COVID-19 vaccination efforts

An implementation executive discusses how Epic's electronic health records are verifying vaccination status, non-traditional vaccination settings, data modernization and how QR codes are helping.

So far, the U.S. healthcare system has vaccinated half of the country with the various COVID-19 vaccines. It's been a tremendous feat in only a matter of eight months. Now comes the hard part: trying to convince those who are hesitant to take the vaccine, or outright refuse to do so, in an effort to reach herd immunity.

But in the effort so far, one of the important tools helping U.S. caregivers has been the electronic health record. It's been crucial to document who has received the vaccine. What's more, there are aspects of the technology that assist physicians, nurses and pharmacists in their tasks.

EHR giant Epic was hard at work last year preparing its tools for administering the vaccine. Now it's had the experience of wide-scale vaccination in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.