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The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society launched the Comprehensive Vaccine Education Program to address vaccine misinformation and hesitation.
The program offers two ways to do this – the first is a web-based curriculum and the second is a mobile app that provides updated vaccine information called The Vaccine Handbook App.
Gary S. Marshall
Healio spoke to the author of the app, Gary S. Marshall, MD, a professor of pediatrics, director of the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and director of the Department of Clinical Studies for Children at the University of Louisville Medical School, for a better look at what the tool can do.
Healio: Can you say briefly us about the advantages to have that The Vaccine manual available in an app?
Marshal: The Vaccine Handbook – A Practical Guide for Clinicians is probably better known as The Purple Book (TPB) because it’s purple (even the app icon is purple). Since its inception in 2004, TPB has had one goal – to bring vaccine science and practical aspects of vaccine practice together in one accessible, comprehensive resource that is as at home in private offices, public health clinics, academic medical centers, or hospitals as it is in the classroom. The priority was to bring the universe of information about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases into language that “normal” people can understand – but not watered down or abbreviated. Please understand, I count myself among the “normal” people. To be honest, that’s why I wrote the book primarily – so that I can process and understand the information.
The entire book has been available in app form (iOS only) since 2016. It is now available for both Android and iOS and will be updated with the 10th edition of the book.
Thanks to PIDS, the app is free to anyone who receives unrestricted industry funding to make this possible. Vaccine training from training to practice is a wonderful example of the power of partnership – in this case between professional society, science and industry.
The app literally brings TPB to hand. It is searchable and allows the user to bookmark, highlight, and annotate. There are hyperlinks to internal material and external Internet resources. Push notifications can be activated and there is even a text-to-speech function.
Healio: How many doctors use the app?
Marshal: There are nearly 19,000 registered users, which is huge by medical app standards. About 5,000 users are doctors. The rest are pharmacists, nurses, nurses, medical assistants, students and trainees. A particular focus of the PIDS initiative has been on trainees, who recognize that one of the most effective ways to protect populations from disease in the future is to educate strong, knowledgeable, and confident advocates of vaccines today.
Healio: Has the app been updated to include information on all COVID-19 vaccines?
Marshal: The COVID-19 chapter was one of the most difficult aspects of preparing for the 10th edition. The information available changes almost daily, so Chapter 11 was saved last. And yes, the app has information about the three vaccines currently available in the US. Note, however, that COVID-19 has forced a revision of many other aspects of the book. For example, a year ago we didn’t talk about messenger RNA and adenovirus vectors that have been given to tens of millions of people (hence vaccine immunology and development revisions). TPB also dealt with the epidemiology of infectious diseases as we knew them (for example R0, the basic reproductive number); Now we also need to understand k, the over-dispersion factor.
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