Delivering Timely Trust to Parent Communications

Achieving Low-effort distribution of relevant health information to parents and carers within a geographic area. 

THE CHALLENGE

To create a facility within eRedbook that enabled trusts to send locally-owned and compiled, health-related information direct to mums with minimal trust administration.

The eRedbook Content management system (CMS) needed to enable trusts to create posts once and then over time send them automatically to relevant parents based on location and/or a schedule relative to the child’s age and/or health conditions. Additionally, it needed appropriate governance and record history facilities.

THE CLIENT

The eRedbook Local Content CMS was developed in conjuntion with NHS England, NHS Digital, and the Digital Child Health Programme as part of a wider eRedbook development carried out under the digital.health Accelerator Programme. The CRM was designed to be used by Midwifery and Health Visiting teams initially across the three accelerator sites: London; Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire; and Lancashire and South Cumbria.

THE SOLUTION

Sitekit developed a Content Management System that makes it easy for a trust to create posts communicating locally relevant information to parents and parents-to-be in their area. Local content posts created in the CMS can be tailored for distribution by borough, age of the child and other attributes such as medical conditions a child has, or languages they speak etc. The CRM automatically schedules the posts sending them to parents at relevant points based on age post birth, location etc. - the health professional doesn’t have to do anything.

The CMS was built to be low maintenance enabling trusts to create posts that link to content hosted on other websites reducing the need for content to be updated in the CMS when things change and maximising traffic to content already hosted on local trust websites.

BENEFITS

By working closely with eRedbook customers and end users we have designed and built a CMS that enables trusts to cheaply create a bank of local content that self-distributes to parents as their children grow and develop - with no required intervention from health professionals. 

The local content bank can be created once by a small team of relevant professionals and be distributed to thousands of parents over a period of years. It requires no additional attention, other than a standard periodic review of the material to ensure ongoing relevance and accuracy. This is a significant improvement on individual professionals variably recommending resources by handing handwritten web addresses to parents during consultations or clinics.

Trusts using eRedbook can be sure that eRedbook parents have access to standardised and agreed materials e.g. feeding advice that is baby-friendly compliant.
Trusts can use priority messages to announce changes in service e.g. closure of childrens’ centres or warn parents of know disease outbreak knowing eRedbook users will receive the message.

HIGHLIGHTS

• eRedbook CMS has been used extensively by SSAFA who deliver Health Visiting Services to Forces families in Cyprus to communicate with their geographically widespread population.
• eRedbook CMS has been used regionally by NHS London to send out Flu vaccination reminder messages to their eRedbook population.
• eRedbook CMS is being used to support COVID-19 response by providing pregnant women and parents of new babies relevant information.

SITEKIT

Sitekit worked in a collaborative manner with multiple groups of stakeholders including NHS England, trusts within the three accelerator sites and SSAFA who deliver Health Visiting Services to Forces families in Cyprus.

Collaboration activities included design workshops, programme level design review, specification agreement, testing carried out by Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire STP and early stage end-user feedback from SSAFA once live.