When unpacking my son's school bag, I used to make unexpected discoveries. An old sweet. A few leaking pens. A scrunched up form masquerading as an aeroplane for me to complete to consent for a flu vaccination.

How easily I could have missed this. What a rigmarole it always was to fill out and return the form. And then the worry it wouldn't make it from bag to teacher until the bag was disgorged at school some days later. And this was only part of the long journey for that crumpled piece of paper.

The lady who ran the school office had to collect each form from every teacher and put them together, arranging with the nurse a convenient collection time.

Once back in their office, the nursing team had to read and decipher every single form and decide if it was OK to go ahead and give our children vaccinations. Often there were lots of missing forms. And lots of missing information on the forms. And the information usually had to be transcribed onto another records system.

What a mission, and fraught with the risk of losses and errors.

Not anymore.

Now for my children, I receive a professional, so easy to complete, online consent form for their flu (and other) vaccinations. A few minutes to complete. And I receive instant confirmation that it's been received.

One of my sons has a medical condition so a nurse usually gives me a quick call having been alerted through RIVIAM.

But for most children, there are no medical issues for the nurses to know about and all these forms are just processed online and made ready for clinic day.

The children turn up ready for their sniff or jabs and the nurses use a RIVIAM app on their iPAD or a spreadsheet to tick them off.

Nurses love it because they don't have to spend time checking bits of paper and they have more time for caring for the children. They can go home straight after the clinic session - there's no need to drop off paper forms and they can just see outcomes later on in their clinical system.

This digital process has:

• Given parents peace of mind
• Saved the NHS money
• Improved care.

We're really proud that from September 1st to today (25th October) over 300,000 children's vaccination consents have been processed via RIVIAM.

This year we’re supporting more NHS customers with our immunisations service and it's great we’re giving them the digital platform to transform how they work.

Get in touch if you'd like a demo of our immunisations service.