Birth Notification Application guide for child health

The BNA is a product owned by NHS Digital which provides a user interface into the Personal Demographics Service (PDS). 

The BNA is designed to allow maternity units and child health units to notify births to the respective parties. To achieve this objective the BNA allows authorised users to either:

• find the mother’s record on the PDS and use the details from that record in the birth notification - this is the normal and preferred method of use
• allocate an NHS Number (with a skeleton PDS record) for a mother that does not currently have a PDS record and use the newly entered details on the birth notification
• process the birth notification without entering the mother’s NHS Number - the personal details of the mother will still need to be entered manually in the birth notification

Access to the BNA functionality is controlled by Role Based Access Code (RBAC). 

Child health units should ensure that users requiring access the BNA have a smartcard with the following assigned to it:

The RBAC code ‘B1610 Allocate NHS Number’ is required to allocate an NHS Number. Without it users will only be able to view any saved birth notifications, they will not be allowed to allocate for a mother or to send off birth notifications.

The roles and activities should be requested from the Registration Authority (RA) team. 

This code will only be approved for the Information Quality team under request from the Information Quality Manager or Information Quality Supervisor.