BACKGROUND:
Designing new and utilizing existing registry functions to meet the requirements of diverse stakeholders to report to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a challenge. The VAccine Safety and REgistry Community (VASREC) Workgroup, formed by the American Immunization Registries Association (AIRA) has been developing recommendations for vaccine adverse event reporting that uses capabilities of Immunization Information Systems (IIS).

OBJECTIVE:
VASREC recommendations intend to serve as operational best practice guidelines, supporting various stakeholders involved in reporting vaccine adverse events to the VAER System via IIS

METHOD:
Business engineering and facilitation techniques were employed to adequately support and develop workgroup's recommendations.
Characteristics include:
•Incremental, consensus-based recommendations development process.
•Utilizing diagrams, operational scenarios, and business rules techniques.
•Monthly calls, supplemented by off-line work.
•In person working meeting to finalize the recommendations.

RESULT:
VASREC recommendations for IIS-VAERS collaboration are developed in the form of a business process model that includes visual diagrams, functional standards, operational scenarios (use cases), and business rules. The resulting document is technology neutral and is written at the business / functional level.

CONCLUSION:
The VASREC workgroup used a modern approach based on business engineering techniques to establish requirements/recommendations for IIS-VAERS collaboration. The selected methodology was flexible enough to incorporate participants from diverse backgrounds. Next steps are to develop alternative scenarios for the reporting process and to validate workgroup's recommendations within the broader immunization community.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
To learn how modern business engineering techniques can be applied to analysis and development of immunization reporting processes.