Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., and Salesforce.com Inc. have joined a coalition that’s aiming to create a digital COVID-19 vaccination passport to enable safer post-pandemic travel.

The Vaccination Credential Initiative, announced today, also includes a number of healthcare organizations such as the nonprofit Mayo Clinic. It’s betting that governments and airlines will start demanding that people show proof they have been inoculated against the COVID-19 virus before they can travel.

The idea is to create a kind of digital passport that can store an encrypted a copy of an individual’s immunization credentials. The VCI has suggested that anyone with a smartphone can receive paper printed QR codes that contain verifiable credentials to enable safer travel.

“The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records,” said Paul Meyer, chief executive officer of nonprofit The Commons Project, which is also a member of the coalition. He said the technology would allow people “to safely return to travel, work, school and life, while protecting their data privacy.”

The VCI is planning to use an existing specification called SMART Health Cards based on W3C Verifiable Credential and HL7 FHIR standards that is designed to let people store medical records in a digital wallet such as Apple Wallet or Google Pay.

It remains to be seen if a digital vaccination passport will ever become a necessity for regional or international travel, however. There are also questions over how the scheme would be implemented. Some people in the U.S. have already received paper cards that record their COVID-19 immunization jabs, and it’s not clear how they would transfer those records to a digital standard.

In addition, some countries are proceeding with models based on existing vaccine documents that some countries already require for entry, such as vaccines for diseases such as yellow fever and polio. There are also ethical questions over whether an individual who can prove they are vaccinated should have more freedoms than someone who cannot.

Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group said that in this case, he believes that health concerns override any ethical or privacy-related concerns. He told SiliconANGLE that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a major problem in that health information tends to exist in silos, and that has significantly hampered the international response.

“Since we know some superspreaders don’t show symptoms and that places where people aggregate, like airports, can be deadly if one of those super spreaders gets in, identifying and blocking those people is critical,” Enderle said. “I see a tool like this as critical to assuring better virus containment and more effective mitigation of its spread, particularly internationally.”

Mike Sicilia, Oracle’s global business units executive vice president, takes a similar view, arguing that digital access to people’s medical records will be essential for resuming safe international travel.

“This process needs to be as easy as online banking,” Sicilia said. “We are committed to working collectively with the technology and medical communities, as well as global governments, to ensure people will have secure access to this information where and when they need it.”

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the fact that this is a cross-industry initiative, backed not only by tech firms but also several major healthcare organizations, could help it to gain broader adoption.

“On the flip side, if there are too many players involved this can slow things down, and speed is of the essence for anything Covid-19-related,” Mueller said. “But credential projects like this do need wide vendor and platform support, so it will be interesting to see how fast the Vaccination Credential Initiative can execute on its goals.”

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