Guidance

Newborn blood spot screening: failsafe procedures

The newborn blood spot failsafe processes help ensure that all babies born in England are offered screening.

From:
Public Health England
Published
5 November 2014
Last updated
1 November 2017 — See all updates

This publication was withdrawn on

The failsafe procedures publication is out-of-date and has been withdrawn. Please use the updated newborn blood spot screening programme processes guidance.

Documents

[Withdrawn] Newborn blood spot screening: failsafe processes

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Details

Failsafe processes minimise risks of anything going wrong in the screening pathway.

Babies can miss screening and blood spot samples can sometimes fail to reach screening laboratories, or get delayed in transit.

Babies affected by screened conditions can suffer serious harm by the time these failures get detected. In some cases they are not detected at all.

These errors can show wider failures in the postnatal care process.

The newborn blood spot failsafe solution (NBSFS) is a national IT system which should be used to minimise the chance of these errors occurring.

Updates to this page

Published 5 November 2014
Last updated 1 November 2017 + show all updates

  1. The newborn blood spot failsafe solution documents have been updated and moved to a separate publication.

  2. Added 'Newborn Blood Spot Failsafe Solution: online survey'.

  3. Addition of newborn blood spot screening failsafe processes document.

  4. Added operational level agreements.

  5. First published.

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