Child Health Reminders

The Challenge

Research suggests, as part of NSW Health’s First 2000 Days Implementation Strategy 2020-2025, a key pain point for parents is not having access to the right information about their child’s health needs at the right time.

Parents feel there is a barrage of information to sort through and validate
Some information is fragmented and can be challenging to absorb, such as information related to health and development checks
Parents find it difficult to track what they need to do and when - in particular, health and development checks and vaccinations.

Data suggests that the number of children receiving health checks declines the older they get. It is a priority to increase child health and development checks under the First 2000 Days Implementation Strategy 2020-2025.

The Plan

Brighter Beginnings is a NSW whole-of-government initiative, led by the Department of Education to give all children in NSW the best start in life. It aims to improve the lives and experiences of parents and families in the first 2000 days of their child’s life and better support all children to achieve the best start in life. It forms part of the First 2000 Days Implementation Strategy 2020-2025.

The NSW Department of Customer Service (DCS) has engaged the Ministry of Health and eHealth NSW to develop a solution to digitally notify parents when childhood immunisations and child health and development checks are due, as part of the Brighter Beginnings program.

Core features being developed in the mobile and desktop friendly prototype, include:

Reminder Service access via NSW Health Engage Portal
User Authentication via Service NSW
Health and Development Checks plus vaccination schedules
Profile setup for parent/carer and child profiles
Ability to opt out of reminders
Choice of reminders via email or SMS
Personalised activity schedule for each child profile based on Date of Birth
Ability to mark tasks booked or complete.

eHealth NSW has engaged a range of stakeholders, including consumers to assist in the development and design of the prototype solution. We are continuing this engagement to ensure the product meets the needs of parents.

Man holding his baby and texting on his phone.

The Outcome

This solution is still in development and likely to be piloted in late 2022.

Mother teaching her daughter the alphabet

The Benefits

Child Health Reminders aims to provide a digital child health and development ‘life admin’ solution that:

Helps parents track when their child’s health and development checks and vaccinations are due through notifications
Makes it easier for parents to know when they need to schedule a health and development check or vaccination
Assists in children receiving their health and development checks and vaccinations on time
Increases the number of children having developmental checks at the recommended milestones.

100,000

babies born in NSW each year

90%

of brain development occurs in the first 2000 days of a child’s life

Brighter Beginnings: Child Health Reminders