Maternity & Children's Data Set

The Maternity and Children’s Data Set has been developed as a key driver to achieving better outcomes of care for mothers, babies and children. The data set will provide comparative, mother and child-centric data that will be used to improve clinical quality and service efficiency; and to commission services in a way that improves health and reduces inequalities. As a 'secondary uses' data set, it re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care.

What will the data set achieve?

It is intended that information from the data set will be made widely available to commissioners, providers, clinicians and service users. It will be used to:

  • Record, compare and improve outcomes and safety
  • Improve clinical quality and service efficiency, thereby avoiding the adverse health consequences of poor services
  • Commission services in a way that improves health and reduces inequalities
  • Improve accountability by providing comparative information to service users to support choice and to enable them to influence how services are developed
  • Provide activity data on which to base mandatory tariffs for Payment by Results
  • Support regulation
  • Increase the understanding and dissemination of best practice based on sound comparators
  • Underpin the improvement of local information systems to meet data set standards.

Links to information standards that comprise the Maternity and Children's Data Set

The Maternity and Children's Data Set incorporates the following individual information standards:

  1. Maternity Services Secondary Uses Data Set

  2. Children and Young People's Health Services (CYPHS) Secondary Uses Data Set

  3. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Secondary Uses Data Set

We developed and tested these standards, working with the NHS and sponsored by the Department of Health.

The standards have received full approval from the Information Standards Board (ISB) as information standards for the NHS in England. The standards represent “output specifications” that define how data should be submitted by NHS commissioned or provided services to a central data warehouse. NHS Services will have the flexibility to adopt any local data collection process and employ whichever IT system that is capable of extracting data in accordance with the output specification.

Implementation of the central data warehouse is currently subject to approval. Once approved, the Information Standards Notices (ISNs) will be published to mandate local implementation of the standards.

Further information and implementation guidance for each of the standards can be obtained by following the links above.

Background

Work on the Maternity and Children's Data Set began with the policy driver of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Children, Young People and Maternity Services in 2004 and remains aligned to the policy direction set out in:

Data set implementation

Subject to approval, a central data warehouse will be implemented to collect and report on the Maternity and Children's Data Set. NHS commissioned or provided services will be required to submit data periodically to this data warehouse. Upon receipt by the data warehouse, patient level data will be validated then pseudonymised and linked, before it is stored and made available for analysis and reporting purposes.

Further information will be provided upon approval.

Further Information

To be kept up to date with developments please use our online registration form.

If you have any comments about this web site, questions regarding the data set or require additional support, please contact The NHS Information Centre at enquiries@ic.nhs.uk or call 0845 300 6016 for more details.