National Solution for Scotland Newborn Hearing Screening Programme Patient Management Support System

NHSScotland is exploring options for a single national patient management IT support solution for the newborn hearing screening programme that will ensure consistent application across all of NHSScotland. This will replace the existing systems across Health Boards and action the recommendation set out in the Scottish National audiology review ‘To recommend a strategic direction for an IT solution to support newborn hearing screening across all Health Boards”.

The aims of the programme are

• To identify permanent moderate, severe, and profound hearing impairment in newborn babies (more than 40dB of loss in the better ear). The Newborn Hearing screening programme offers all parents/carers/legal guardians in Scotland the opportunity to have their baby's hearing screened shortly after birth. Early identification gives babies a better 'life chance' of developing speech and language skills and of making the most of social and emotional interaction from an early age.
• To support the screening programme with IT processes, which will maximise patient safety and ensure effective communication at all parts of the screening pathway.

There are currently two screening models used to perform the newborn hearing screening assessment in Scotland, the otoacoustic emissions (OAE) model and the automated auditory brainstem response (AABR) model. These use different techniques to evaluate the hearing pathway of the infant. The system will be required to support both screening model. The screening pathways can be found as appendices.

The national solution will need to

• Integrate and be interoperable with NHS Scotland existing systems as specified.
• Provide efficient local and national reporting.
• Provide real time data (e.g. providing alerts to flag identification of outstanding screens, provide up to date reporting)
• Be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and must have an extremely high degree of resilience in order to minimise any periods of scheduled or unscheduled downtime. Vendors of future solutions should note that this resilience should include but not be limited to Failover and Disaster Recovery of the system with limited technical intervention.