PRESS RELEASE: North Macedonia Partners with The Commons Project Foundation to Enable Use of Tamper-Resistant, Verifiable Digital Vaccine Records

Nov 22

Vaccinated citizens can use SMART Health Cards to quickly and securely verify vaccination status for travel, events and more.

SKOPJE - North Macedonia, in partnership with The Commons Project Foundation, today announced the nationwide adoption of SMART Health Cards, a digital vaccine record that can be safely and privately shared with compatible services, to enable citizens to resume day-to-day activities such as travel, work and school. North Macedonia recently announced cafe and bar restrictions for unvaccinated individuals, and was the first country in the world to adopt the SMART Health Card standard nationwide as a way for citizens to prove their vaccination status.

SMART Health Cards were developed by VCI, a global coalition of public and private stakeholders including Microsoft, Cigna, MITRE, the Mayo Clinic and more from various industries with the goal of empowering individuals with access to a trustworthy and verifiable copy of their vaccination records in digital or paper form. With the digital vaccine credential, citizens can safely share their vaccination status with trusted third parties in a privacy preserving way.

SMART Health Cards have quickly become the de facto national standard for verifiable vaccine credentials in the U.S, with Walmart, CVS, the State of California, the State of Louisiana, the State of New York, UC San Diego Health, and UC Health all making SMART Health Cards available to vaccinated individuals. With iOS 15.1, iPhone users can add verifiable COVID-19 vaccination information as a vaccination card in Apple Wallet and download and store verifiable vaccination and test result records in the Health app. Samsung also recently announced integration for the SMART Health Card standard within Samsung Pay. Several additional governments are expected to adopt the standard in the coming months. While the initial use cases for SMART Health Cards are focused on COVID-19 vaccination records and test results, the model of providing individuals with access to their health data in secure, verifiable form has broad applicability to inform clinical care, health research and public health.

“Implementing SMART Health Cards will bring more benefits to our citizens. They can easily store and share vaccination certificates wherever they need. As we have seen there are more than one digital standard in the world so we want our citizens to have all digital options in case of travel and restrictions,” said Dr. Venko Filipche, Minister of Health of North Macedonia.

“With the adoption of the SMART Health Card standard, North Macedonia is empowering individuals within the country to safely access and share their vaccination status with trusted parties, proving they’re a global leader in the safe reopening of activities,” said Paul Meyer, Executive Founder and President of The Commons Project. “The Commons Project is happy to support the country in these efforts.”

All citizens that have received two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine can visit vakcinacija.mk to download their own SMART Health Card vaccination certificate. The SMART Health can then be scanned using the mobile digital health app CommonPass, enabling users to easily share their vaccination status in a secure way via their mobile phone when entering restaurants, bars, shopping malls and other establishments that require proof of vaccination.

About The Commons Project Foundation

The Commons Project Foundation (“TCP”) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that builds and operates digital platforms and services for the common good. TCP was established in 2019 to create digital public infrastructure to fill the void left by tech companies and to reduce the burdens of governments. Since its founding, TCP has built a suite of digital products that operationalize the infrastructure of interoperable data standards (i.e., SMART Health Card Verifier App) and empower users with access to their health data (i.e., CommonHealth). TCP also co-created VCI, a broad coalition of public and private organizations dedicated to providing access to verifiable health records to people around the globe.

To learn more about The Commons Project Foundation, visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter (@commons_prjct). For general inquiries, email info@thecommonsproject.org.

For media inquiries, contact us at:

Alex Newby

120/80 MKTG on behalf of The Commons Project Foundation

alexn@120over80mktg.com

press@thecommonsproject.org

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