Police in Suffolk have launched a state-of-the-art IT system to help officers track down missing people more quickly.

The IMPACT (Intelligent Missing Persons and Case Tracking) system, which has been developed by Bristol-based WPC Software, is designed to speed up the process of investigating and recording missing persons cases.

Most people reported missing return home or are traced within a short period of time; but some do become long-term missing, causing great stress for their friends and family.

Suffolk Police investigates on average 200 missing persons cases each year. Thanks to IMPACT, officers investigating such cases can now access and share information at the click of a button and are able to carry out a risk assessment on everyone who disappears.

Each individual is ranked as high, medium or low risk and IMPACT builds up case histories of people who go missing frequently, providing officers with valuable information instantaneously.

A 'briefing sheet' summary, containing details and photographs of missing persons, is displayed when users log onto the system. These can be easily printed for officers to take on patrol with them as a ready reference.

IMPACT has been designed to replace outdated, paper-based systems which are more time-consuming and can delay potentially important door-to-door inquiries.

Detective Superintendent Roy Lambert said: "The Suffolk Constabulary is currently involved in a challenging initiative to make the county the safest in the country. Making use of technology and computer systems such as IMPACT can only help us in that goal."

Ten police forces have now adopted IMPACT and Suffolk Police are the latest to install it. Thousands of operational officers nationwide have now been trained to use IMPACT, just one of a range of innovative computer systems developed by WPC Software which are now used by two thirds of the UK's police forces.

Dave Kelly, IMPACT business manager at WPC Software, said: "More than 250,000 people a year are reported missing in England alone. This places a massive workload on police investigating such cases. IMPACT reduces the amount of time officers spend tracing missing people and, hopefully, the time it takes to reunite them with their family and friends."