Maternal and foetal morbidity and mortality remain major issues in pregnancy care. No standardised methods of comparing outcomes across hospitals exist. As a result clinical outcomes may vary considerably and hospitals with worse clinical outcomes may go unnoticed. The Maternal & Newborn Clinical Management System (MN-CMS) Project is the design and implementation of an electronic health record for all women and babies in maternity services in Ireland. This record will allow all information to be shared with relevant providers of care as and when required. The electronic Health record was introduced in Cork University Maternity Hospital in 2016 as part of a national thirty five million euro project. All 19 maternity units in the Republic of Ireland will have adopted the electronic health record by 2020. This research proposal would integrate the candidate within the National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre based in Cork University Maternity Hospital with the key aims of:
• Designing and implementing a validation process to check the completeness and accuracy of data from the Irish Maternity Services electronic health record and its potential use for research.
• Developing and integrating patient-reported outcome measures into the electronic health record.
• Identifying, auditing and ranking core adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes and their key influences.
• Validating and comparing performance algorithms across obstetric and neonatal services.
• Identifying key modifiable factors such as training and resources that may help improve clinical outcomes. This project will validate the national electronic health record data and create performance indices using real-time data which may be used by units nationally and internationally to accurately compare performance, improve outcomes and identify units with poorer outcomes. This will allow targeting of resources to improve care and reduce morbidity and mortality for mothers and babies.
