With COVID-19 vaccination programs finally kicking off in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, IBM Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. are teaming up to provide a secure way for people to verify their health status so they can get back to work safely.

The companies said today they’re integrating IBM’s Digital Health Pass with Salesforce’s Work.com platform to offer a “privacy-preserving” way for people to share their vaccination and health status. The idea is that employers will be able to verify that people can return to the office without putting anyone else at risk, while hotels and sports venues will be able to reopen safely.

The IBM Digital Health Pass is a secure verification system built on blockchain technology that makes it possible verify people’s health status based on certain criteria such as test results, vaccination records and temperature checks. Once a vaccine has been administered, that individual will receive a verifiable health credential stored in a digital wallet on their smartphone that can be shared using the Digital Health Pass. That enables people to control whom they share their data with while protecting their privacy and ensures their health records cannot be tampered with.

Salesforce’s Work.com platform was launched in May. It provides technology tools and resources for businesses to reopen for work safely and get their employees accustomed to practicing social distancing in the work place. At launch, it included tools for employee wellness assessments, shift management, contract tracing and emergency response management.

Later updates added capabilities such as identity and access management to the platform. Then, in September, Salesforce announced a new version of the platform called Work.com for Vaccines with secure and flexible tools for designing, building, integrating and managing vaccine programs from end-to-end.

Today’s integration means the IBM Digital Health Pass is now available from within Work.com, which means organizations now have a single hub from which they can organize how to reopen their business premises and get people back to work.

“As testing becomes more widespread and vaccine distribution gets underway, we are expanding the availability of IBM Digital Health Pass with Salesforce to help organizations verify an individual’s vaccine status and any other relevant health credentials,” said IBM Watson Health General Manager Paul Roma.

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