Table 2.

Advantages and disadvantages of the use of a clinic-based electronic vaccine monitoring system compared with vaccine card verification during enumerations rounds in a health and demographic surveillance system

Vaccine Registry	Vaccine card survey at enumeration rounds
1. Allows for real-time monitoring vaccine coverage data	1. It cannot provide real-time vaccine coverage data
2. Facilitates rapid intervention/reaction to improve coverage and/or correct immediate problems	2. Produces data too late for directing interventions for problem solving or to improve coverage
3. More difficult to initiate but relatively easy to maintain	3. Convenient and relatively easier to set up
4. Not dependent on good record keeping and entries at vaccine clinic, but electronic platform helps improve record keeping	4. Dependent on good record keeping and entries at vaccine clinics
5. Response rate is not dependent on card retention, data are obtained at real time in vaccine clinics	5. Response rate is dependent on card retention in population
6. Risk of missing data in migrants, especially older children	6. May miss migrants but more likely to reach them with repeated cycles of data collection
7. Facilitates linkages across all vaccine clinics and electronic health records at referral hospital and for catchment population	7. Not possible to link to morbidity and other registries in real time
8. Provides more opportunities for updating vaccine records especially when linked with hospital and other records	8. Typically stand-alone and does not provide other opportunities for updating individual vaccine records
9. Less risk of non-response error and missing data	9. Increased risk of non-response error
10. Can be used or linked to other modules for increasing vaccine coverage, e.g. reminders/recall	10. Cannot be linked or extended to serve other purposes such as reminders/recall for vaccination
11. Has utility for tracking, for example bar-coded vaccine vials, and for vaccine-associated adverse events surveillance for assurance of vaccine safety	11. Contributes very little to surveillance of vaccine-associated adverse events
12. Not dependent on presence of primary caregiver	12. Dependent on presence of card holder/primary caregiver who is often not available
13. Requires more investment since it is population wide	13. Relatively cheaper when limited to a sample of the target population, like migrants in this case