Czechia's new health app displays vaccination records from 2023

The new health application EZKarta, replacing the Tečka app used by about 2.3 million people in Czechia last year, will show information about medical tests and vaccinations from 2023, said the Health Ministry representatives who presented the app to the media on Wednesday.

Parents will automatically have access to their children’s vaccination records on the app, which was launched on Monday and has already been downloaded by several hundred thousand users. However, it will not yet serve as a replacement for the paper vaccination card.

The app has garnered 350,000 downloads from iPhone users and approximately 500,000 from Android users since its launch on Monday. During this morning's press conference, the system was overloaded, and the app was temporarily unavailable to some users.

According to Health Minister Vlastimil Válek, the app cannot display older vaccination records due to doctors’ failure to input them into central systems. Attempting to include older records retroactively poses a high risk of inaccurate data, Válek added.

General practitioner for children Hana Cabrnochová highlighted the administrative burden associated with vaccination. She noted that doctors document administered vaccines in the child’s paper vaccination card and the patient’s medical records. Since 2022, they have also been required to record each vaccination in the system, from which EZKarta retrieves its data.

Cabrnochová added that the vaccine application provides more detailed information than the paper ID card, including the specific diseases each vaccine protects against. This is helpful as parents often don’t know which vaccine their child received for certain illnesses, like whooping cough. The app helps parents keep track of their child’s immunization history.

The Ministry of Health plans to add a directory of their websites to the app by year-end. A future map of healthcare providers and office hours will be added. Vaccination info is already downloadable.

While the ministry had previously said the app would display examination results and enable making a doctor’s appointment, Válek noted that the ministry now aims to make it possible to share medical documentation and access it securely on mobiles.

For those users of Tečka who don’t have automatic updates enabled, upon opening Tečka, they will be redirected to the application store where they can download EZkarta. After completing the identity verification process, they can log in using the same password they used for Tečka.