Overview
As part of its improvements to maternity services, the NHS is switching to digital maternity records that make information about a woman’s health easier and quicker to access.
The PRSB has produced a standard for maternity care records, which will mean that information from a record can be understood by all IT systems in use across the country, enabling the seamless exchange of information regardless of local maternity system boundary.
Standardised records will save time for health and care professionals and pregnant women by ensuring they have the necessary information in the right place at the right time, to make decisions for safer care. It will also support mothers in managing their own maternity information, giving them more personalised and focussed appointments with healthcare professionals and helping midwives and clinicians to provide holistic care.
It supports the future goal of ensuring that everyone involved in maternity care, including women themselves, have access to a standardised set of paperless, digital maternity records.
The standard, published by the PRSB, is part of the work by NHS England and NHS Digital to improve maternity care in the UK.
Developed and supported by midwives, clinicians and other professionals, the work was conducted in partnership with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) Health Informatics Unit (HIU).
Supporting Documents
Maternity record standard - record specification
Download the record specification (as displayed in the contents section) as an Excel file.
Maternity record standard - data model specification
This document contains the Maternity record data model specification and associated format and SNOMED codes. The document is designed to be used alongside the record specification above.
Implementation guidance (produced by NHS Digital)
This guidance sets out issues identified during the project which relate to the implementation of the headings and sub-headings.
Final report
The final report outlines the process taken to reach the final standard
Survey analysis
Download the results of the Maternity record standard survey 1 and 2
Endorsements
The Maternity record standard has been endorsed by the following organisations:
- Royal College of Midwives
- Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
- Royal College of General Practitioners
- The Royal College of Physicians
- Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
- Royal College of Nursing
- Royal College of Occupational Therapists
- Royal Pharmaceutical Society
- Institute of Health Visiting
- TechUK