TACCARD^tm from THERAPYAUDIT Limited is a web-based data collection and audit tool that has proven effectiveness in supporting CCARD condom distribution schemes. Successfully used in a 3 borough pilot in London in support of the Pan-London scheme, TACCARD is now being rolled out to an additional 26 London Boroughs, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Suffolk.

The solution has the flexibility to enable collection of data from boroughs that use the scheme as their primary collection system and boroughs that have their own collection systems already in place and merely want to share / provide data with the wider group.

Under the scheme young people register once with their local borough. They are then issued with their personal CCARD (which is also associated with the issuing borough), and their basic demographic details are recorded on TACCARD.

This card can be used by young people to collect free condoms at any of hundreds of issuing points around London which will include pharmacies, GP surgeries and health centres, young family and youth support centres, schools and colleges, youth offending services, as well as various charities. As the card is assigned to a particular borough this provides the basis for the cost of condoms that are issued to be recovered, and makes information on take-up and usage available which helps to measure the value of the scheme.

The cards that are issued use similar technology to TFL Oyster cards, and are ‘read’ by a reader attached to a laptop or PC at the issuing location. Each card can also have a barcode and number printed on it so the cards can be used without the need for a reader or where barcode scanners are available.

This makes the data collection scheme highly portable, particularly when 3G technology is used in laptops which enables data to be captured in TACCARD wherever a mobile 3G signal is available.

The web-based technology behind TACCARD enables it to act as a hub in the flow of information: between young people who will benefit from the free condom distribution scheme; the boroughs who are interested in tracking usage of the scheme; and other interested parties such as health authorities who require reports on activities. The registration point and the access point can be one and the same. Interfaces also exist between TACCARD and other systems such as Brook so that data collected in those systems can be transferred to the TACCARD database. As shown in the diagram, young people can register for a CCARD at a registration point that will be within a particular borough’s geographical area.

Each borough has an unlimited user licence, and an unlimited number of young person and encounter records can be added. When the young person registers they are associated with the borough in which they register. Subsequently they can access the CCARD service anywhere it is available, and when they do so their CCARD is used to identify them, and an encounter record created in TACCARD to record the advice they have received. If the young person accesses the service at a location within the borough they originally registered with, the TACCARD user will be able to see all the data recorded about the young person, but if the young person is accessing the service in a neighbouring borough, only the encounter data can be recorded. A borough will not see data for young people not registered with it. At any time a licensed third party such as a Health Authority or Local Authority can run reports on the collected data for audit purposes. For the London scheme interfaces have been developed for other existing data collection schemes such as Brook.

Interested?

If you want to know more about TACCARD – call 0800 756 1087 or complete our contact form.