The Canadian Vaccine Catalogue provides timely, accurate and comprehensive standards-based vaccine-related content. This content is needed for software developers and system implementers to build and configure interoperable systems for the capture and digital exchange of immunization records across health care domains and jurisdictional borders. The CVC content also facilitates vaccine barcode scanning for both inventory management and immunization administration.
The CVC is a dataset that is aggregated from a number of different data sources to provide a comprehensive list of vaccine products in Canada, as well as information about those products, and standardized terminology to represent those products in digital systems. Each month, the following data is aggregated from its respective source, and published in a new version of the catalogue:
Health Canada provides lot numbers and expiry dates of all vaccine lots that are approved by the Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate. The CVC also leverages data available in the Drug Product Database.
The Public Health Agency of Canada provides product information which it obtains through its relationships with vaccine manufacturers as a bulk purchaser of vaccines. This product information is submitted by vaccine manufacturers to the Public Health Agency via the GS1 ECCnet database. This information includes fields like Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), Drug Information Number, and other packaging specific fields.
Canada Health Infoway maintains the Pan-Canadian Immunization Reference Sets which are SNOMED CT terms for vaccine related concepts. The reference sets include subsets for historically reported vaccines, administered tradename vaccines, vaccine preventable diseases, and antigens. These terms are included in the CVC and mapped to the product data received from Health Canada and the Public Health Agency.
The data above is aggregated and made available through the following channels:
The CVC excel workbook can be downloaded from the Downloads page.
The HL7® FHIR® API is designed to be used by other digital systems to access the catalogue electronically. API documentation and an implementation guide can be found on the Integrate page.
The CVC Explorer can be used to explore the contents of the catalogue online.
The CVC is designed to allow electronic medical record applications to implement vaccine picklists that are always up-to-date and backed by standardized interoperable terminology. This will facilitate integration/interoperability between clinician EMRs and provincial immunization information systems and aid EMRs in implementing data collection aligned with national standards.
Where applicable, the CVC also facilitates the automated identification of vaccines via barcoding as it incorporates the GTIN identifiers contained in vaccine packaging barcodes and maps the GTINs to the SNOMED CT terms used to represent the vaccine in the clinical information system.
The CVC is intended to be used by jurisdictions configuring immunization information systems. In addition to vaccine terminology configuration, the CVC can support supply chain management use cases through the use of GTIN and the accompanying mapping to SNOMED CT codes.
The CVC is also intended to be used by third-party digital health applications that capture or display vaccination information. The CVC will be particularly useful for applications aiming to be interoperable with provincial immunization information systems.
The Canadian Vaccine Catalogue is currently owned, developed, and maintained by the Ottawa Hospital mHealth Lab. The development has been funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The Public Health Agency's Automated Identification of Vaccine Products (AIVP) working group serves as the advisory committee for the project.
The governance model is under review to support adoption and ensure long-term sustainability of the CVC.
The CVC product roadmap currently includes the following items:
The Canadian Vaccine Catalogue is free to use and accessible to everyone. However, use of the catalogue is subject to your acceptance of the SNOMED CT Affiliate Agreement and the SNOMED CT Canadian National License Agreement.
To accept the terms of these agreements, please create an account at https://infocentral.infoway-inforoute.ca/en/register.
Please report all issues, questions, feedback, and change requests to cvc@canimmunize.ca.
