1. Scope

COVID-19 illustrated the need for digital health certificates including vaccination records that could be used in an interoperable fashion across organizations. Digital health certificates, such as with COVID-19, are intended to provide proof that a person has been vaccinated against infectious diseases, tested for the virus, or recovered from infectious diseases.

Leveraging the lessons learned from digital COVID-19 certificates, a global trust framework is needed to build upon for future verifiable health credentials (VHC). VHC enhances healthcare and public safety efficiency by enabling rapid and secure sharing of health information. VHC can represent information found in health credentials, a future form of digital health certificate. Opportunities to expand health credentials to cover other vaccination, such as yellow fever or Monkeypox are possible with VHC. It is recognized that VHC should be suitable to be used by both existing and emerging systems such as those based on decentralized identity (DID).

VHC could be integrated together with other governments credentials, such as a passport using technologies such as public key infrastructure (PKI) and distributed ledger technologies to enhance data protection. VHC could be implemented in four stages: issuing, importing, and offline verification of the verifiable health credentials, and verification by transportation, health officials, and/or government officials. A primary goal of this JCA is to ultimately result in tools used to prevent the spreading of infectious diseases worldwide and enabling individuals to have control over their own health information as they seek care.

There is a need for coordinating activities across ITU-T SGs and related SDOs working on this important subject. The Terms of Reference of this JCA are consistent with Recommendation ITU-T A.18. The scope of the JCA is coordination of the ITU-T verifiable health credential (VHC) standardization work including digital health certificates among relevant ITU-T study groups and external organizations and forums, fostering the use of compatible data architectures for sharing data, and promoting interoperability, agility and safety for users, and all relevant stakeholders involved.

The JCA-VHC should consider PP-22 Resolution 215 on the “Role of telecommunications/ICTs in mitigating global pandemics" and the UN Sustainability Goal 3: GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING.

The JCA-VHC will be a platform for relevant stakeholders – such as public health authorities, telecom regulators, healthcare delivery organizations, services providers, platform providers, network operators, travellers' organizations, healthcare users' organizations, international organizations, and industry forums and consortia.​

2. Objectives

The JCA-VHC will ensure that the ITU-T VHC standardization work is progressed in a well-coordinated way among relevant study groups. Planning issues can be brought to the attention of the JCA-VHC. The JCA-VHC will facilitate work assignment through the involved study groups when it is not clear under which Question work should be done and recommend an allocation of tasks.

The JCA-VHC will analyse VHC standardization work items and coordinate an associated standardization roadmap.

The JCA-VHC will act as a point of contact within ITU-T on VHC and with other intergovernmental organizations (in particular WHO), the European Commission as well as with SDOs/Forums (in particular ISO/IEC JTC 1/SCs 6, 17, 27, 35, and 37, W3C, ISO/PC 317, ISO/TC 215, ISO/TC 307, GSMA, EC, IEEE, ECMA, etc.) in order to avoid duplication of standardization work and assist in coordinating the VHC work of the relevant study groups. ​

As per Recommendation ITU-T A.18, clause 6.2, JCA-VHC is open, but (to restrict its size) should primarily be limited to official representatives from the relevant ITU study groups that are responsible for work on VHC. A portion of each JCA-VHC meeting may be allocated to raising awareness of VHC issues addressed by other ITU-T Study Groups Questions, and external organizations.

JCA-VHC may also include invited experts and should invite representatives from other intergovernmental organizations (e.g. WHO) and relevant recognized SDOs/Forums (in particular the ISO and IEC committees as referenced above), as appropriate.

The JCA should strive towards encouraging joint activity with the relevant SDOs (in particular ISO and IEC) and organizations.

3. Administrative support

TSB will provide support for JCA-VHC within available resource limits.

4. Meetings

JCA-VHC will work electronically using teleconferences and with face-to-face meetings as needed. Meetings will be held as determined by the JCA-VHC and will be announced to its participants and on the ITU-T website. JCA-VHC will meet during TSAG meeting if it needs to.

5. Progress reports

The JCA-VHC will report to TSAG at its meetings. Progress reports and proposals will be sent to relevant study groups as necessary, in accordance with Recommendation ITU-T A.18.

6. Leadership