The Government (who I loathe with a passion btw) has not announced a new process. It is not requiring the gathering of any data that are not already collected. It is not proposing a new database. Absolutely nothing is new except that data will be stored in such a way that they are accessible to practitioners faced with children with difficult-to-explain injuries.
It was suggested above that doctors need more training to spot non-accidental injuries. If only that we're possible. A spiral fracture of the femur of an immobile child is probably abuse, but a clean tibia break on a 3yo boy? How do any of the contributors to this thread think a doctor can tell when an accident is genuine? Asking the parents can be useful but abusers are often cunning and agree a story before presenting. How they are dressed, how they speak, how angry or panicked they are are almost useless as diagnostic tools, in case any of you were thinking about those options but didn't want to say. Asking the child can be useful but there is a narrow window - which is different for every child - between a child learning to speak and being capable of being scared into concealing truth, if that is what their carers want. Sad, but true.
What else is there, then?
Why does a doctor take a medical history whenever you as an adult seeks a consultation? Because diagnosis requires it, and without diagnosis there can be no treatment. Adults complain if a doctor doesn't ask them enough questions because we all know how important it is.
It follows that if either of my DDs goes to A & E I want the hospital to have as much information as possible. Why wouldn't you want that too? The raw data which will be available if this database-sharing initiative works (big if!) will be part of the picture used to treat our children. The fact that a child has been to hospital many times proves nothing, but it can inform clinical observations just as knowing in an adult whether or not they smoke.
Those children with conditions requiring frequent medical attention will be better protected when every medic who encounters the child can see that by consulting the computer. Frankly I am HUUUGELY suspicious of anyone who claims their child has, say, brittle bones and would be greatly assisted to know immediately that they are telling the truth.
I don't understand the comments about 'box-ticking'. All this information is gathered anyway and is shared with varying success as observed above. What is proposed is not a process, or a step in treatment to be completed before the practitioner moves on: it is a means by which a child's medical history can be available to a practitioner when that child is in her or his care. To talk of 'box-ticking' is to misunderstand how emergency medicine works.
As for those who think that abusers will not take their children to hospital because they will get in trouble, consider that children keep turning up at hospital even when abuse is obvious. Even the most inadequate and (literally) hateful parents do not want to be prosecuted so - as unlikely as it may seem - come to hospital for the child to be fixed before s/he gets worse. Sadly, the parents want to save their own skins more than they care about their children so I can't see that process stopping.
Finally, a word to those who say they would be more reluctant to take their children to A & E because of this. Please have a long, long moment to think about that. You are actually saying that you would deny urgent medical treatment to your child because you are scared of what others might think about you. That is a stunning and disturbing admission which, frankly, I don't believe. If you think your child needs to go to A&E you take them immediately and hang what anyone might say. They are your joy, your own, your responsibility: they rely on you to be brave. If you pause, that is a cause for concern.
Best wishes, Huppopapa (who went to A&E as a child with an axe-wound!)