An opportunity to incentivize innovation to increase vaccine safety in the United States by improving vaccine delivery using vaccine patches

Abstract

Vaccines represent cost-effective and safe interventions that provide substantial health and economic benefits to individuals and populations. The US vaccine enterprise that supports all aspects of immunization continues to encourage innovation. Despite some limited historical recommendations to create a fund to support investments in vaccine safety, and recent legislation that supports innovation for new vaccines (the 21st Century Cures Act, Public Law 114–255), to date the US lacks financial incentives to fund innovation in vaccine delivery technologies. Building on separate reviews of the US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and the state of development of vaccine patches as an innovative vaccine delivery platform, we suggest an opportunity to allocate some VICP Trust Fund resources to prevent future VICP claims by creating a new incentives fund to support translational studies for improving vaccine delivery technologies. We identify shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA) as a test case.