19863 (2024). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister of Health

19863 (2024). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister of Health: What progress, if any, has been made in the quarter October to December 2023 in actioning the recommendation ‘Set up a system to enable direct birth notification from hospital and lead maternity carer to PHO enrolment, rather than indirectly via the National Immunisation Register. This is likely to lead to more timely and complete enrolment of newborn babies directly to PHO enrolment’ under ‘Priority Area 4: Enrolment into health services from birth’ within the ‘Initial Priorities for the National Immunisation Programme in Aotearoa 2022’?

Hon Dr Shane Reti: I am advised that in December 2023, the Aotearoa Immunisation Register (AIR) was launched and replaced the National Immunisation Register (NIR). The NIR was responsible for processing the daily feeds from the maternity system and the manual registration for newborns. These feeds contain information about the newborn nomination and their immunisation status. I am further advised that one of the benefits of AIR is the ability to link with the new joined up technology ecosystem and will connect paper forms, maternity system data, national enrolment service, HealthLink, provider systems, relationship database and the outreach CRM (Whaihua). Further work is planned to automate newborn enrolment.