Technology platform ensures children get health checks

Technology platform ensures vulnerable children get health checks

3 September 2018

The National Child Health Information Platform is being used to help locate vulnerable children and ensure they get appropriate health checks.

NCHIP is a technology platform developed by Pinnacle Midlands Health Network with Orion Health, with support from the Ministry of Health.

It is currently used to electronically track and monitor the milestone status of the children born and/or living in the Waikato, Taranaki and Tairāwhiti DHB regions, and the GP and Well Child/Tamariki Ora providers they are engaged with.

The Auckland region DHBs are also working to implement NCHIP and aim to develop a project delivery plan before the end of 2018.

The platform is designed is to ensure all children have access to health providers and receive their health checks on time, including immunisations, oral health assessments, Well Child checks, hearing and vision checks, and B4 School Checks.

Waikato and Taranaki DHBs are two of the four boards nationally to have achieved 100 per cent newborn metabolic screening programme rates, due to NCHIP tracking milestones and identifying children who are missing them.

Pinnacle Midlands Health Network teams the technology platform with a coordination service. If providers are unable to contact or find a child who is due for a health check, they can contact the Child and Youth Health Coordination Service.

This team can launch a wider search, working with cross-sector partners such as the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Social Development to locate vulnerable children.

Between 1 January and 31 March 2018 the CaY-C team found 35 children who were lost to providers – children who otherwise may have missed important milestone checks.

Pinnacle general manager Andrew Swanson-Dobbs says, “paper-based records combined with IT information silos meant many children used to fall through the gaps when coordinating care between providers”.

Using NCHIP, children are now electronically registered at birth, giving nominated health providers access to their record and enabling providers across the primary, secondary, community, NGO and government sectors to connect and coordinate more efficiently.

“NCHIP’s main advantage is it gives all health providers involved with a child a shared, child-centric view of progress towards the child’s 29 health milestones that are checked over the first five years of their life, and who is delivering health services to a particular child,” Swanson-Dobbs says.

There is no clinical information held by the system, only data on the child, family contact details, providers involved, milestone status and the dates.

All interactions with the NCHIP system are tracked and auditable.
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