NI Child Health System Support and Maintenance Contract

The NI Child Health application serves a business area that is wide, varied and complex in nature. It covers areas such as: • Newborn Bloodspot Screening • Pre-school Childhood Vaccination and Immunisation Programme • Pre-school Developmental Surveillance • School Health - Medical, Appraisal, Vision Screening, Audiology Screening, Vaccination Programme • Influenza Programme • Early Intervention Transformation Programme in Nursery Schools • Looked After Children - Health Appraisal and Review The Child Health programme is comprised of a number of complex processes and supporting algorithms that help ensure the right people are called for the right treatment at the right time and that any significant results or outcomes are suitably followed up. Failure in any part of this has potential for adverse patient impact. The CHS is a regional solution and is used by the 5 Trusts. It has been developed and honed over its lifetime to help ensure it completely supports this complex business. Any failure in the CHS will significantly increase the risk of failure in the service. This is particularly evident in the neonatal screening programs which are time critical programs where blood samples taken on day 5 of life result in positive cases need to start treatment by day 21. If late diagnoses happened as a result of failures in the CHS, this would have very serious human and financial consequences for families and HSC. In addition, the system provides numerous analysis reports for use by various bodies including: Government; DHSS&PS; HSCB; PHA; Trusts; NISRA; LCGs and GPs. CHS data is also used for research and audit purposes and for many of these organisations is an invaluable source of information to enable the planning, monitoring and management of population need and service provision.