The usefulness of the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) is flawed by the inability of providers to record patients’ medical risk factors including pregnancy, researchers say.

They’ve called on the government to upgrade the AIR to enable ‘essential’ recording of underlying medical conditions that qualify patients for targeted vaccination programs — and potentially to pay GPs for providing the extra information.

Reporting influenza vaccination to the AIR has been mandatory since 1 March and reporting all other National Immunisation Program vaccines will become mandatory from July this year.

But AIR forms include no fields in which to record whether patients are pregnant or are priority groups for vaccination because of medical risk factors, unless they are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.