Problems with a system used to track NHS vaccinations
could be putting children at risk, according to the Health
Protection Agency.
In the independent agency’s Communicable Disease Report it says
that national trends on vaccination were not available for the
third consecutive quarter because of problems implementing the
Child Health Interim Application system in London. The vaccination
system had no information on 51,500 children in the city.
“These children are not necessarily unvaccinated, but the fact
that no information has been collected on their vaccination status
means that those who have missed out vaccines for whatever reason
are unlikely to have been identified and followed-up,” the report
says.
According to the HPA, the old vaccination system had been
successful in reducing childhood disease by sending invitations for
vaccination, identifying unvaccinated children, sending reminders
and tracking their status for catch-up campaigns.
“If new child systems fail to deliver these functionalities then
children risk missing out on vaccinations. Thus they remain
unprotected and eventually will catch measles, mumps, and rubella
infections,” the report warns.
NHS Connecting for Health and its London supplier BT had
intended CHIA as a stop-gap replacement for its ageing vaccination
system, until the functionality could be built into BT’s integrated
Care Records Service system from IDX, which is now owned by GE
Healthcare.
The supplier and Connecting for Health, which runs the £6.2bn
National Programme for IT, originally believed this system would be
available from June this year, but it is now at least two years
behind schedule.
In February, Dr Martin Baggaley, clinical director for NHS
Connecting for Health, London, said, “We acknowledge that there
were issues with the new computer system, known as the CHIA, and
supporting processes. I would like to offer reassurance that the
new computer system will not have put individual children at any
increased risk of missing their vaccinations.”
Conservative MP Richard Bacon pointed out that this was
contradicted by the report from the HPA. “These wildly
contradictory statements will cause great confusion and concern for
many parents of young children in the London area. I have asked the
health secretary for an urgent explanation of how she plans to
solve these problems, which have been created as a direct result of
the new NHS IT programme,” he said.
Connecting for Health said in a statement, “It is not right to
say that the NHS National Programme for IT is causing rates to
reduce [and] we do not believe that the introduction of the new
computer system has put individual children at risk.
“We acknowledge there have been issues with the new computer
system [the CHIA] which we regret. The alternative of no computer
system would have been far worse.”
Connecting for Health said the CHIA’s problems would not put
children at risk because the Primary Care Trusts had “put in place
manual systems to manage vaccinations and to ensure that routine
immunisation and vaccinations programmes have continued to
run.”