The VCI™ Charter

A SMART Health Card stores healthcare information and other vital medical data. SMART Health Cards provide a platform to:

• Improve privacy and security of patient information
• Make medical records portable
• Reduce healthcare fraud

SMART Health Card Framework

To achieve this purpose, the founding members of VCI™ have collaborated to develop (1) the SMART Health Cards Framework Implementation Guide based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credential and Health Level 7 (HL7) SMART on FHIR standards, and (2) the SMART Health Cards: Vaccination & Testing Implementation Guide..

There is no charge for use of VCI™ created standards and implementation guides.

The SMART Health Cards framework includes a requirement that any verifier is able to validate the signature on a Health Card using only publicly available resources (i.e., openly published, web accessible JSON Web Key Set files) with no pre-arrangement or transactional costs.

Participating Organizations

VCI™ participating organizations commit to testing, refining and implementing the SMART Health Cards Framework within their sphere of influence and also commit to providing vaccination records in their stewardship directly to individuals in accordance with the VCI™ Implementation Guide via:

• Any compatible digital wallet of the individual’s choice
• PDF or paper with QR codes containing W3C verifiable credentials

Participating organizations issuing SMART Health Cards may also agree to be listed in a common registry of issuers with appropriate conformance testing and associated trust framework.

Where appropriate, participating organizations may also be called upon to assist in the issuing of other records like diagnostic tests, or other ways as needed to ensure the success of the initiative.

Key Design Principles

VCI™ is guided by a commitment to the following core design principles:

• Openness & Interoperability: based on international standards and open technologies and interoperable across countries and regions.
• Transparency: operated in an open and transparent manner.
• Privacy by Design: upholds and protects the privacy of individual health data and designed to comply with applicable data privacy regulations.
• Flexible and Equitable: designed to adapt over time as the pandemic and science evolve. Accessible and usable by anyone worldwide in any language regardless of level of wealth and economic development, including availability in digital and paper (QR code) forms.

VCI Verifier Code of Conduct

VCI™ expects verifiers to adhere to the following core set of requirements in order to protect and properly interpret SMART Health Cards:

• Verifiers shall not store SMART Health Cards, or any data included within them, beyond what is required for verification at the time of presentation.
• Verifiers shall check SMART Health Cards against a list of trusted issuers.
• Verifiers shall comply with all applicable laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Governance

VCI™ has a Steering Group composed of the founding members of the coalition that are actively supporting and overseeing the implementation guide development process and ensuring that members of VCI™ faithfully implement the standard and adhere to the guiding principles of VCI™. Members of the Steering Group currently include representatives from Mayo Clinic, MITRE Corporation, Microsoft, The Commons Project Foundation, Evernorth, CARIN Alliance, UC San Diego Health, and Apple.

Members