Entering a baby’s health records into a little blue book (in Queensland a little red book) has been a rite of motherhood for many years, but could be consigned to history with the launch of trials of a new Child Digital Health Record (CDHR) in NSW.

Depending on their location in Australia, a child’s health and development information is captured in different paper records.

As a result, a child’s parents must carry this vital information around in books as they go between healthcare appointments and visit multiple providers.

The CDHR initiative is looking to co-design, develop and pilot a digital version of the state hard copy ‘baby books. $A5 million was allocated to the development of a Digital Baby Book in the 2018 Federal Budget.

The CDHR is being tested through a proof-of-concept trial across two local health districts in New South Wales: Western Sydney (Blacktown) and Western NSW (Dubbo/Coonamble). The trial will test the feasibility of a digitized Baby Book and the required functionality for making this available to healthcare providers and the parent/carer of the child.

The first phase of the CDHR has been to harmonise the various paper-based records of baby and child health checks that exist in different parts of Australia (such as the Red Book in Queensland and the Blue Book in NSW) into a national data set. This will be the foundation of the CDHR.

General practitioners and Primary Health Networks are involved in the trial which will be independently evaluated by researchers from Victoria and NSW (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and University of NSW).

Alcidion Group (ASX:ALC) will build and integrate two key components for the proposed national Child Digital Health Record (CDHR), thanks to a new contract with NSW Health.

Under the agreement, ALC will deliver an operational Child Data Hub (CDH) and a NSW Health Jurisdictional Translator that will take data from operational systems and pass it onto the CDH.

The Child Digital Health Record is a proposed national scheme, which will be trialled in two NSW Health Districts. The solutions developed by ALC will be hosted in a Microsoft Azure cloud environment.

https://www.childrenscollaborative.gov.au/child-digital-health-record