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DAPB3009 Healthy Child Programme

An information standard for child health services, to allow everyone involved in caring for children to share information by using standardised digital records. 

In November 2016, NHS England published Healthy Children: Transforming Child Health Information, a digital strategy describing how making child health information more accessible, and sharing this information, can support parents and professionals in their care of children and young people.

Phase 1 - This information standard supported the move to sharing of child health information by setting out the Healthy Child Record specification that care providers were asked to comply with, on a local basis, to ensure consistent use of standardised data formats across all providers.

Phase 2 - Interoperability and Implementation - of this information standard now introduces the mechanisms for sharing of this standardised data.  

This information standard is published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. An Information Standards Notice provides an overview of scope and implementation timescales, and the other listed documents provide further detail for those who have to implement the information standard.


Publication: Information Standards Notice

What's Changed

Phase 2.3: The New born screening event now includes testing for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).  This is an in-service evaluation to assess the feasibility of adding SMA into the national new born blood spot screening programme. 

SMA will be added to the list of conditions forming part of the newborn blood spot screening result sub-status simple reference set. 

Scope

This standard applies to the following key groups and organisations who provide health care to children including:

Primary Care Services, Child Health Organisations, Community services, School Nursing services, Maternity Services, Health Visiting services, Screening Laboratories. Organisations providing NHS England commissioned immunisation services for children.  

Organisations in scope of this standard shall work through local contractual arrangements with their system suppliers to implement the changes required:    

Principal Clinical Providers (GP / Primary Care Services), Child Health Information System Providers, Community system suppliers for example Health Visitor and School Nursing System Providers, Screening Service Suppliers (supporting UK Health Security Agency’s national screening programme for children), Any system supplier providing solutions for NHS England commissioned immunisation services, DPCHR (digital Personal Child Health Record) providers 

Type Collection
Schedule of submission Daily
Responsible Data Assurance Board
Date of approval 21 April 2026
Publication date 15 May 2026
Release name Amd 3/2026
Implementation date 1 October 2026
Full conformance date 1 October 2026
End date of assurance  30 June 2027
Legislation

This information standard, published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, has been amended, and persons subject to this information standard must continue to have due regard to the information standard where it is relevant.

Key documents

Requirements Specification and Implementation Guidance (Amd 3/2026)

Record Specification (Amd 3/2026)

Change Specification (Amd 3/2026)

Event Specification (Amd 3/2026)

Contact information

[email protected]


Earlier releases and updates

May 2025

What changed

May 2025 – The Data Assurance Board approved an amendment to the existing Healthy Child Programme Information Standard. This amendment is to support the addition of reporting fields for Hereditary Tyrosinaemia (HT1) to the Newborn Blood Spot Screening (NBS) included within the standard and data collection. 

There are some other additional minor amendments included as part of this update. For example, update to two key Sickle cell screening outcome codes which are causing potential clinical incidents, and an additional decline sub-code for all conditions screened for. For full details of all changes in this update please refer to the updated Change Specification for the standard, under current release below.

Release date 06/05/2025
Release number Amd 56/2024
Release title  Phase 2.2
Stage Superseded by 3/2026
Key documents 
Supporting documents 
July 2022

Phase 2.1 - Interoperability

Release date 14/07/2022
Release number Amd 16/2022
Release title  Phase 2.1 - Interoperability 
Stage Superseded by Amd 56/2024
Key documents 
Supporting documents 

 

October 2020

Phase 2

Release date 08/10/2020
Release number Amd 11/2020
Release title  Phase 2 - Interoperability
Stage Superseded by Amd 16/2022
Key documents 
Supporting documents 
Admin updates

Addition of superseded refs in earlier releases

Update of documents to reflect publication date of 2 June 2026.

Update to What's Changed 2.3, and addition of contact information

4 June 2026 - Change of full conformance date from 31 October 2026 to 1 October 2026 at request of the team.

Last edited: 4 June 2026 8:08 am