NHS Digital has been collaborating with midwives, obstetricians, nurses and other clinicians to create the maternity record standard, which relates to direct patient care, describing the optimal data structure and format of a maternity record.
This new information standard provides for local implementation of this maternity record within maternity services and supplier systems, to enable the future exchange of information between maternity providers. This will ensure that both health and care professionals and maternity service users have the necessary information in the right place at the right time, to improve the quality and safety of maternity care. The standard will also support maternity service users by enabling more personalised care, as well as helping midwives and clinicians to provide holistic care.
The standard will be fully implemented in two releases:
- Release 1 (the subject of the documents below) ensures that each provider and related clinical system/Personal Health Record (PHR) that have been commissioned to support NHS services are storing the same data in a standardised format.
- Release 2 will pertain to sharing the standardised data via national interoperability functionality currently under development by NHS Digital.
Note that the timescales for DCB3066 Release 2, in terms of fully detailing the mechanism of interoperability, ISN publication, and provider implementation, are yet to be defined.
This information standard is published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. An Information Standards Notice (see below) provides an overview of scope and implementation timescales, and the other listed documents provide further detail for those who have to implement the information standard.