NICC 4.0 is available

What's included

Supported cohorts

This version (4.0.0) of the NICC includes catch-up recommendations for all infants, children, and adolescents under 20 years of age as per the NICC Under 20s Business Rule Specification (v4.2 is available for download from the NICC page).

This includes infants, children, and adolescents who may have one or more medical at-risk conditions (as defined in the Australian Immunisation Handbook), and those who may have received one or more vaccinations overseas.

Generating schedules for people with multiple at-risk conditions

As before, Health professionals will continue to be able to select multiple medical at-risk conditions a person may have. The NICC will also continue to pre-select a 'dominant' condition from the list of nominated conditions using a combination of factors. Health professionals can generate a schedule for the 'dominant' condition.

Inclusions

This version (4.0.0) of the NICC includes catch-up recommendations for the following antigens:

• Diphtheria, Tetanus (dT).
• Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (DTPa, dTpa).
• Hepatitis A
• Hepatitis B
• Haemophilus Influenzae Type B
• Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
• Meningococcal ACWY
• Meningococcal B
• Meningococcal C
• Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR)
• Pneumococcal Conjugate
• Pneumococcal Polysaccharide
• Polio
• Rotavirus
• Varicella.

In addition, this version (4.0.0) of the NICC also includes:

• Ability to ‘print’ the schedule (in addition to ‘Save PDF’).
• ‘Live vaccine’ indicator on the catch-up schedule to alert health professionals to proceed with caution. (The ‘Live vaccine’ indicator is displayed in ‘red’ colour for certain medical at-risk conditions which have contraindications. Otherwise, it is displayed in ‘black’ or neutral colour).
• Refinements to the medical at-risk conditions list, including but not limited to:
  • Inclusion of additional medical at-risk conditions (e.g. harmful use of alcohol, smoking), and condition specific catch-up recommendations.
  • Inclusion of additional sub-conditions (e.g. low birth baby and gestation period for a preterm infant).
  • Refinements to the labels to improve usability.
  • Alphabetised listing to improve usability.
  • Refinements to the date labels for the medical at-risk conditions to improve usability.
• Ability to select birth weight for a ‘low birth weight baby’, and condition specific catch-up recommendations.
  • Low birth weight <1500g, or
  • Low birth weight >1500g and <2000g.
• Ability to select gestation period for a pre-term infant, and condition specific catch-up recommendations.
  • <28 weeks,
  • <32 weeks or
  • <37 weeks.
• Ability to select whether the person has ‘functional asplenia’ or ‘anatomical asplenia or splenectomy’. Ability to specify a date for splenectomy.
• Ability to specify dates, including those in the future, for planned procedures (e.g. HSCT, SOT, splenectomy), and allowances for a no-vaccination period pre and post procedure (e.g. 4 weeks before and 6m after HSCT).
• Refinements to the list of vaccines, including additional ‘Generic/Other’ variants, and alphabetised ordering of the ‘Generic/Other’ vaccines.
• Minor refinements to the antigen grouping logic (DTP-IPV, DTP-IPV-HepB-HIB, MMRV).
• Interim bug fixes and refinements to the ‘production’ Under 10s release (where applicable).
• Code refactoring to improve the internal structure, scalability, and maintainability without changing its functionality. Removal of legacy and redundant code.
• Updates/upgrades to the libraries in use.
• Refinements and enhancements to the automated test suite (added new, updated existing test cases). We have circa 350 automated test cases (think of them as a scenario with expected schedule) which have passed/cleared.

Exclusions

• Influenza (antigen and vaccines). NICC 4.0 includes messaging about Annual Influenza doses, but does not include Influenza vaccines on the schedule.

What else is in the works?

We've been working away at re-introducing the vaccine brand names on the catch-up schedule. We're working through the various nuances of presenting the relevant age, condition and circumstance appropriate vaccines. We know this helps save health professionals valuable time.

How you can help

Participate in research activities

We are always looking for volunteers to help us improve the NICC. Involvement includes, but is not limited to:

• periodically reviewing the NICC business rules for currency and accuracy,
• participating in pre-release and/or user acceptance testing of the NICC, and
• participating in research activities (online surveys, interviews, workshops etc.).

If you are interested in participating in any of the above activities, please contact us.

Provide feedback

As always, if you see something, say something. Use the provide feedback form to inform us about defects and feature requests.