NICHS Cache Support Services 26/27

This DAC is needed to procure support services to permit the continued operation of the NI Child Health System (NICHS) and hence the continued delivery of Child Health services to the population of Northern Ireland.

The NICHS is an information system used by all 5 HSC Trusts to record and manage the information needed to provide Child Health services to the population of Northern Ireland. The system provides essential support to staff involved in health appraisal, screening, vaccination and immunisation of children - both before they go to school and during the period of school attendance.

CHS supports the business of a wide range of stakeholders. Trusts rely on the system to support the delivery of services. Other organisations, including HSCB, PHA and DHSSPS rely on the information generated by the system for the monitoring and planning of services. NISRA use CHS data for analysis and reporting and GPs rely on CHS data for the scheduling of preschool services.

CHS data is also used for research and audit purposes and it is a feeder of information to the Electronic Care Record.

As a unique and comprehensive population based register of all - 0 to 19 years of age - children in N. Ireland, the CHS has facilitated numerous Public Health initiatives in the areas of teenage pregnancy, childhood obesity, special needs, breastfeeding, low birth weight, infant mortality, smoking in pregnancy and monitoring progress in tackling health inequalities.

There are 4 instances of the NICHS in use - one in each of the WHSCT, NHSCT and SHSCT one in BHSCT serving the needs of both BHSCT and SEHSCT. In addition, there is a "NICHS Hub" that facilitates the interchange of data between Trusts.

Caché is the technology used for both the NICHS application software and for the NICHS database. Without Caché, the system would not exist. The version of Caché used must be compatible with the hardware on which it runs.

The NI Child Health System is hosted on the HSC Consolidated Servers which have 64-bit processors. The new licence for the 64 bit of Caché was purchased on 1st April 2020 along with the yearly revenue costs for Caché support services. At that time the yearly percentage uplift to the ongoing yearly revenue costs was not applied to these costs.

This DAC is, therefore, required to ensure that the ongoing Caché support services remain in place, for the duration of the contract, to enable the staff in the organisations cited above to use the CHS and to ensure that the technology used to provide the application and the database is suitably upgraded and supported.​