National Breast Screening System – Te Puna

This new system will replace the 8 current cBS IT systems with a single system, which will enable us to automatically identify eligible women who can then be invited to enrol in the programme who have not participated historically.

The name of the new system - Te Puna, translates to ‘the spring’ and was gifted to the programme to reflect the purpose of the BreastScreen Aotearoa programme to protect the life and health of wāhine.

Te Puna will move Breastscreen Aotearoa from paper-based to digital assessments. This means improved reliability, functionality and usability. It also means much better tracking of participants, improved data and reporting.

BreastScreen Midland was the first region to go-live on Te Puna on 10 February and have been followed by Te Waipounamu on 10 March.

Women in the BreastScreen Midland and Te Waipounamu regions will now be able to confirm enrolment, book, or reschedule an appointment through a personalised link sent to them via email and text message when they become eligible or due for a screen. Letters (with a QR code to access their personalised link) will also be sent out to women to encourage them to enrol or book their screen.

If women are in the Nelson Marlborough region the age extension will also apply.

Extending the age range for free breast screening

The rest of Aotearoa will go live over the next four to five months.

There are around 135,000 women across Aotearoa who may be eligible and are not currently accessing breast screening who we will be able to invite to participate by confirming their enrolment and booking a screening appointment via the new system.

Access to Te Puna for women will be free through an initiative called Zero Data, which provides free access to several health websites.

Women will not incur mobile charges or require having data on their mobiles when they access the site through their personalised link if with Spark, Skinny, One NZ, 2degrees, Warehouse Mobile, Slingshot or Orcon mobile networks.