The immunisation schedule is published every two years. A full list of vaccines is available on the Diseases and vaccines page in the YourHealth consumer section.

The NIR is mostly used by the Ministry of Health, DHBs, PHOs and general practices to monitor the immunisation coverage of their populations.

National Immunisation Register

Purpose

The NIR Collection has been established to provide data for monitoring immunisation coverage and the progress of immunisation campaigns such as Meningococcal B and HPV.

Content

The NIR Collection is updated every week with a full load of data from the National Immunisation Register, which is a register of all immunisation enrolments and events, including Meningococcal, Childhood Immunisation, and Tuberculosis vaccine (BCG).

Start date

The NIR Collection was implemented on August 2004.

It contains Kidslink data from January 2002. The main cohort at Counties Manukau starts from January 2003. Other districts have different start dates.

Childhood Immunisation data

Childhood Immunisation data starts from a cohort beginning in April 2005, with the exception of 30,000 children from the original Kidslink system in Auckland.

Collection methods – guide for providers

Data is sourced from primary care providers and the Schools-Based Vaccination System (SBVS) via the NIR system.

Frequency of updates

Vaccination events and enrolments are updated every week.

Data security

The NIR Collection is accessed by authorised National Collections and Reporting staff for maintenance, data quality, analytical, and audit purposes.


Authorised users have access to the data for monitoring vaccination coverage via the secure Health Intranet.

Privacy issues

Te Whatu Ora is required to ensure that the release of information recognises any legislation related to the privacy of health information, in particular the Official Information Act 1982, the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.


Information available to the general public is of a statistical and non-identifiable nature. Researchers requiring identifiable data will usually need approval from an Ethics Committee.

National reports and publications

All reports, including national and DHB-level reports are available to secure users using Business Objects Infoview over the Health Intranet.

Please note, Business Objects is currently being decommissioned.

Data provision

Customised datasets or summary reports may be available on request, either electronically or on paper. Staff from the Analytical Services team can help to define the specifications for a request and are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the data.

The Analytical Services team also offers a peer review service to ensure that national collections data is reported appropriately when published by other organisations.

There may be charges associated with data extracts.