New Study Highlights the Growing Value of England’s Maternity Data
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people give birth using NHS-funded maternity services in England. Much of what happens during pregnancy, birth and early care is recorded in a national system known as the Maternity Services Dataset (MSDS). A new paper, published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), sheds light on what this dataset contains - how it has developed and why it is a vital resource for understanding pregnancy, birth and early life outcomes in England, and importantly, the benefits for parents, babies, clinicians, services and policymakers.
MSDS captures information from early pregnancy through to discharge from maternity services. It includes records of antenatal appointments, labour and delivery, and key information about babies such as birthweight, gestational age and admission to neonatal care. The dataset also captures demographic and social information, allowing researchers and the NHS to explore differences in care experiences and outcomes across populations and communities.
Introduced in 2015, the MSDS has evolved over time. The original version was replaced by Version 2.0 in 2019 following a national review of maternity services. In its early years, coverage was incomplete, with not all hospitals providing full data. However, coverage has steadily improved, and from 2022 onwards the MSDS includes almost all NHS-funded deliveries in England. This marks a significant step forward in making the dataset more complete and nationally representative.
One of the MSDS’s key strengths is its ability to be linked with other NHS datasets, including hospital, mental health and community care records. This makes it possible to follow mothers and babies over time and to study longer-term health outcomes beyond the immediate maternity period. However, challenges remain, including missing information where data fields are not mandatory, variation in data quality between NHS trusts, and difficulties in making long-term comparisons between the two versions of the dataset. Work is underway to address these issues.
Despite these challenges, the MSDS is already used in national audits and service planning, and its research potential is rapidly expanding. As coverage continues to improve and more years of information become available, the dataset will allow researchers to examine national patterns in maternal health, inequalities, and baby outcomes in far greater detail than previously possible. In doing so, MSDS has the potential to inform safer, fairer and more effective maternity care, and generate evidence to support healthier outcomes for mothers and babies.
Lead author Catherine Stewart said, “The Maternity Services Dataset contains a wealth of information from across the maternity care pathway, most of which is not available anywhere else. As it matures, it will become an increasingly valuable resource for pregnancy-related research. This paper aims to support researchers in understanding the MSDS’s content and potential.”
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Ms Catherine Stewart; Institute for Women’s Health, University College London