I refer to letter PHA(IMM)05/2023 issued on 17th August 2023 which outlines practical advice and operational details of the shingles vaccine programme. VMS has been updated to support administration records for VMS and must be used to record shingles vaccines administered since 1st September 2023.
A number of GP practices have started reporting vaccines administered on VMS and this is supporting PHA to monitor uptake of the vaccine programme. As advised previously, the writeback was operational within Merlok from 1st September. Following engagement with the Vision supplier, Vision has been updated and writeback is now fully supported. The EMIS supplier is continuing to work on developing this function.
Once the update of EMIS is complete, all VMS records for practices using EMIS will be retrospectively written back. Practices should continue to record on VMS and are requested not to duplicate recording in their own systems. All practices can identify patients for recall using the shingles recall dashboard available within VMS. I hope the GPNI lunchtime education session on changes to the shingles vaccine programme was useful. The session has been recorded and is available here for those who were unable to attend the session on the day.
If you have any questions relating to the shingles vaccine programme, please contact pha.immunisation@hscni.net
