“The parents of every newborn baby are offered a routine blood spot test to screen for rare conditions when their baby is five days old.  Early detection and treatment can improve health and prevent severe disability or even death.  In April 2010 the National Screening Committee mandated that the baby’s NHS number must be on the blood spot card.  The number is generated shortly after birth when the Midwife uses a National NHS Numbers for Babies System (NN4B) to notify the birth.

“Without the NHS number it isn’t possible to identify the sample safely and every year many babies have to be re-tested because their NHS number isn’t added to their blood spot card.  This is a particular issue for Independent Midwives who generally have to rely on the Child Health Records Department (CHRD) sending the NHS Number in the post.  Unfortunately this means that in many cases they don’t get the number in time for testing on day five.

“It was a conversation with some Independent Midwives at a conference that sparked the idea of using NHSmail to transmit the NHS number.  I’ve used NHSmail for six years and it occurred to me that sending the information over a secure email system instead of by post would improve the efficiency and security of maternity and child records and would be a very easy solution that would spare babies a repeat test that could be easily avoided.”

“We set up a pilot project which ran from July to December 2010 where two independent midwives and child health administrators were given NHSmail accounts.  The pilot was very successful - 16 babies were born under their care during this time, and all babies had their NHS numbers returned in time for screening on day five with an average time to receive of one and a half days.

"We anticipate that the use of secure NHSmail accounts to transmit the birth notification and NHS
numbers would save retesting babies.  All of those involved in the pilot found NHSmail a huge improvement on previous methods and said that they wanted to continue to use NHSmail.'
The challenge now is for rollout throughout England.”

Julie Tindale, National Clinical Lead Midwifery, Nursing and NHS Number has been impressed by the innovation, “The system is a welcome improvement in the timeliness of notification of birth and allocation of the unique identifier for healthcare - the NHS Number.

“The reduction in time taken to receive the NHS number is remarkable for this group of babies delivered by Independent Midwives.  Not only does the baby benefit from the unique identifier being available for blood spot screening, but it can be used for any healthcare event in the first few days and weeks of life.  The real benefit here is that all care, diagnostic tests results and letters about the appointments can be correctly collected and saved in the baby’s own record, wherever the care event takes place.”

For more information see: www.newbornbloodspot.screening.nhs.uk  and www.cfh.nhs.uk/nhsmail