Computerised vaccination register for the Murcia region, Spain, 1991 to 2011

We describe the Murcia regional vaccination register in Spain, which was set up in 1991, detailing its main features, advantages and limitations. We also report on some recent special actions carried out that led to an improvement in vaccination coverage against measles, rubella and mumps (MMR): by using the vaccination register, we were able to identify and vaccinate persons aged under 20 years in a measles outbreak in 2010 in the town of Jumilla who were not adequately vaccinated for their age with MMR vaccine. From spring 2012, use of our register will enable us to identify susceptible individuals in our region under 40 years of age who have received fewer than two doses of MMR vaccine and call them for the appropriate vaccination. We also set out our experience in the use of barcodes to identify individuals and collect vaccine data: our data show that the barcodes help to improve data quality and completeness. Finally, we identify certain challenges in search of greater standardisation for systems and encoding that is necessary to enable an easy exchange of data between different registers.