A digital Personal Child Health Record or ‘red book’ is on the horizon. The Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health (RCPCH) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Harlow Printing to explore the development of a Digital Personal Child Health Record.
The digital product would complement the printed red book, which has been used across the UK since the 1980s to monitor children’s health and development.
The aim is to provide families and healthcare professionals with a modern, connected system for logging and viewing early childhood health records. The updated digital solution would feature a clinical back-office web portal alongside a mobile application for parents and carers.
Building on the RCPCH and Harlow Printing’s (trading as Harlow Solutions) existing relationship, the MoU creates a framework to transition from an agreement in principle to formal development and commercial agreements.
Development is expected to take around nine months from commencement, with pilot activity to be agreed before any public launch.
RCPCH president Professor Steve Turner describes the red book as ‘one of the simplest and most enduring tools we have to record early child health and wellbeing’, adding that ‘a digital version of the red book can allow quick access to records where the book isn’t to hand’.
Image | ISTOCK
