Draft Implementing Child Health Interoperability step by step guide

This guide provides step-by-step instructions on what you need to do to implement NEMs interoperability and who needs to be involved.

We have also included an implementation plan template, some checklists and information to help you work through the actions, monitor your organisation's progress and lead the project to a successful conclusion. 

This version of this guidance covers the following events  

• PDS messages (birth notification, death notification, change of address, change of GP)
• Screening messages - newborn hearing Screening, newborn infant physical examination (72-hour NIPE), Blood Spot Screening
• professional contact 
• vaccinations 

It also provides additional information for the following care settings

• Child Health Information Services (CHIS)
• Health Visiting and School Nursing (HVs/SNs)
• Digital Personal Child Health Records (DPCHR)

NHS England, NHSX and NHS Digital have all worked together to simplify exchange of health information using a publication or subscription pattern which is how NEMs works: organisations publish demographic and health events for a patient and those with a legitimate interest in that patient subscribe to receive the information. Although NEMs was initially used to support exchange of information in the Healthy Child Programme, it can be used in any care setting.

Suppliers of IT systems supporting Health Visiting, School Nursing, Primary Care and Child Health Information Services have tested their connectivity to NEMS and are now using it to provide interoperability to their client organisations. Other IT suppliers can also offer this service once they have been through the necessary testing and assurance processes. Once they are accredited, they can offer you this service.

The service is intended to improve the availability of information and introduces efficiencies in how that information is distributed, removing or reducing the reliance on receiving paper notifications. The key change to business processes in the services you support will be not having to find or manually retrieve and re-key information but rather in acting on information received by systems in a timely manner.

The implementation of NEMs interoperability is best accomplished through a team effort involving both the provider organisation and the supplier. The activities included in this guide are designed to:

• define the team members and their responsibilities
• explain what needs to be done to implement NEMs
• identify what information is needed, who should supply it, and when it should be supplied

This document tells you how to ready a project to take advantage of the changes being introduced by the Digital Child Health programme.