Newborn Screening Ontario (NSO) is made up of a dedicated team in both the newborn screening (NBS) office and laboratory. Working together, the NSO team ensure that every baby’s results are reported in a timely fashion. The success of the screening program also depends heavily on the hard work of all people involved with the care of expecting parents and their newborn babies, as well as those working at the treatment centres who care for babies with positive results. These include doctors, laboratory staff, midwives, nurses and hospital administrators, to name a few.

Laboratory 
NSO uses a small blood sample taken from a baby's heel to test whether the baby might be at risk of having one of 28 rare but treatable diseases. The blood is usually taken when the baby is between 1 day and 1 week old and then placed and allowed to dry on a special filter paper. About 2,750 of these dried blood spot (DBS) samples arrive each week in Ottawa from all the places in Ontario where babies are born - whether it is a big city hospital, a family's home, or from a remote community in the North of the Province. The DBS samples are first carefully checked by the technical personnel in the laboratory. If everything is okay with the sample, small 3mm punches are taken out of the sample in order to do the testing. Currently, 7 punches are needed for the initial screening tests. If any test are positive, it is repeated twice on the next day to make sure there were no testing problems before the positive result is released. Rarely more punches need to be taken from the sample because there might have been an equipment or other testing problem. A wide variety of sophisticated technology is used in the testing, including tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), enzyme activity testing, immunoassays and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

Administration/Data Entry
Our four full time data entry clerks are responsible for entering demographic information into our database on every baby whose sample we receive. This information includes the baby and mother’s name, the baby’s OHIP number, the submitting hospital/ doctor/ midwifery practice and contact information for the baby’s mother. In the event that a baby screens positive, this information allows the treatment centre to contact the family immediately to arrange further testing. Other information essential for accurate testing includes the baby’s date/time of birth, the date/time of collection of the NBS sample, the baby’s gestational age (if premature), the baby’s weight, the type of feeding the baby is receiving, and the baby’s transfusion status. If any vital information is missing, our data entry clerks call the submitter to obtain the missing information (many of you may be familiar with our team!). Our two administrative assistants are responsible for providing information on ordering new NBS cards and envelopes, issuing amended NBS reports when submitters call us to correct information on the original NBS report, and handling inquiries regarding missing reports/reports sent to the incorrect provider. Our two genetic counsellors are responsible for referring babies with screen positive results to the regional treatment centres, providing newborn screening education to our submitters (for newborn screening bulletins, please click here), and handling general inquiries regarding newborn screening.

For more information about the Newborn Screening Ontario team, please click here.