Women's and Children's Hospital, Adelaide

Women's and Babies Division

Patient Care Units

Wards

Clinical Information Services

Clinical Information Services (CIS) maintains clinical data bases in the specialty of Perinatology.

Data is collected on the pregnancy and outcome of every live birth and late fetal death occurring at the WCH including on every baby admitted to the Neonatal Intinsive Care Unit and Special Care Baby Unit. The data is collected according to the guidelines of the Pregnancy Outcome Unit of the South Australian Department of Health for the Supplementary Birth Records and in consultation with the senior clinicians of the WCH.

The data is used to provide statistics of pregnancy characteristics and outcomes or profiles of groups of women or obstetric procedures.

Data collection began in the late 1980s and complete and validated data is available from 1990, thus trends in obstetric practises and outcomes can be determined. Neonatal data collection began in 1993. Data is submitted to the Australian & New Zealand Neonatal Network.

Audits and reports are provided to various departments of the hospital for managerial and research purposes.