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Researchers at Oxford Population Health’s National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit and ten children’s surgical hospitals across England and Scotland will use a service provided by NHS DigiTrials to investigate whether care and outcomes could be improved for children who have six conditions that usually need complex surgery shortly after birth.

baby hand holding a finger

The Children’s Surgery Outcome Reporting (CSOR) programme aims to identify any differences between hospitals in the care that they provide for children who have six conditions that are likely to need an operation early in life. The programme also looks at how the care may affect the children’s health and quality of life as they get older. The findings are then used to provide hospitals with recommendations for how they can improve care for these children.

NHS DigiTrials was developed by the Oxford University Big Data Institute, in partnership with NHS Digital, IBM, and Microsoft to provide safe, authorised access to patient data to help trials reach and benefit as many people as possible; it is now managed by NHS England. The study recruitment service identifies patients who might be suitable to take part in research studies. The service also contacts patients on behalf of researchers to tell them about the study and ask them if they would like to take part.

CSOR will use the NHS DigiTrials service to contact parents of children who have one of these six different conditions, in order to ask them about their child’s quality of life. This information will be linked with information that is collected directly from hospitals and from other NHS England resources, and will be used to identify any differences in the care that the children received. A feedback process will then be delivered that will help hospitals to understand what actions they can to take to improve care.

 

Read the full story on the The Nuffield Department of Population Health (NDPH)  website.