The 4Ds
Four categories of condition, screened at birth, at the anganwadi, and in school.
And why each category is grouped as it is
Structural and metabolic
Conditions present from birth, identified as early as the delivery facility allows. Early identification changes the surgical and medical options available, and in several conditions determines whether intervention is possible at all.
The commonest finding, and the most treatable
Anaemia, vitamin A and vitamin D deficiency, iodine deficiency and general undernutrition. These dominate the findings in most school screening cohorts. They are also the category where a closed referral loop makes the most difference, because the treatment is cheap and effective and the failure mode is simply that nobody followed up.
Communicable and non-communicable
Childhood illness, including skin and dental conditions that are routinely missed because nobody looks. Dental and ENT screening under the EPIC programme exists for this reason.
Including hearing, vision and learning
The category that most requires a longitudinal record, because a delay is defined against a trajectory. A single screening can raise a question; only a series answers it. This is the strongest argument for a profile that persists between annual cycles.
Why coding matters here
Development findings recorded as free text cannot be compared year to year. Coded at capture in SNOMED CT, they can.
See the screening platform.
78 screens designed around these four categories.