The Trust's internal team created its tailored Child Protection solution as an extension of existing workflows, designed around the specific needs of the Emergency Department. Leveraging InterSystems technology that was already in place for NHS Number tracking, the new capabilities were implemented quickly and without service disruption, and staff needed only minimal training.

The Trust's Child Protection solution ensures hospital staff immediately receive an automatic alert on the electronic patient record when a child has a protection plan or is classed as looked after, i.e., having full or interim care orders or voluntary care agreements. Alerts also apply to any pregnant woman whose unborn child has a pre-birth protection plan. By using a HealthShare real-time connection to the Spine 2 national patient demographics database, the Trust gets the most updated information to identify the child, which is then used for direct access the CP-IS.

The key social care information from CP-IS helps authorised care professionals assess in a timely manner whether a child is at risk, ensuring child protection and safe guarding guidelines and processes are followed. This is an important link in providing joined-up care. For clinicians in unscheduled care settings, access to relevant social care information is essential to identify children who may be at risk - regardless of where in England they live or are admitted - as the service works across care settings and local authority boundaries.

CP-IS is a major initiative, led by NHS England and the HSCIC, designed to track admissions in all unscheduled care settings including local authority children’s services (social care), hospital emergency departments, minor injury units, walk-in centres in CCGs/primary care, maternity units, GP out of hours, paediatric wards, and ambulance services. Once the national CP-IS service is complete, it will connect 1,230 NHS settings and 152 local authorities to facilitate the protection of vulnerable children across the country.

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust consists of two hospitals - Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary. Combined, the hospitals have more than 1,000 beds supporting a large local population of 435,000 people, and an increasing number of patients from outside the region who travel to them for care.

Bernadette Hepper, Project Manager at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, said, "Protecting young people in our care system is of utmost importance. The CP-IS project means clinicians in unscheduled care settings can detect whether a child may possibly be subject to abuse or neglect. We were already using InterSystems HealthShare to track NHS Numbers, so upgrading to include access to the CP-IS was possible with minimal disruption to the current workflow."

Steve Garrington, Vice President, International, InterSystems, said, "InterSystems is delighted that Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust has chosen HealthShare as the strategic interoperability platform to implement the Child Protection-Information Sharing project. Calderdale and first-of-type site Homerton have shown it’s relatively easy to implement CP-IS, and they are willing to share their experience."

Garrington added, "As there are more than 100 Trusts across England using InterSystems technology, we hope many more organisations will choose to rapidly follow Calderdale and Homerton to support his important national initiative to protect vulnerable children in the UK using this joined-up approach."

Related news articles:

• InterSystems' Profile

About Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust runs the two main hospitals in Huddersfield and Halifax - Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal Hospital - and provides outreach services in the local communities.

Last year the Trust cared for more than 119,000 men, women and children as inpatients (staying at least one night) or day cases, and more than 414,000 people attended its outpatient clinics. A&E departments at both hospitals cared for more than 141,000 people. From April 2012 to March 2013, some 185,000 adult service and 90,000 children service contacts were provided by its community teams.

The Trust is recognised as being amongst the top performing Trusts in the country and is continuing to modernise and invest in health services to build on this strong reputation.

About InterSystems
InterSystems develops advanced software technologies that enable breakthroughs. With a passion for excellence and a focus on client success, InterSystems provides data management, strategic interoperability, and analytics platforms used in healthcare, financial services, government, and other industries. In selected countries, InterSystems also offers unified healthcare applications, based on its core technologies, that deliver on the promise of connected healthcare. Founded in 1978, InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), with offices worldwide, and its products are used daily by millions of people in more than 100 countries.