NDS-IS - Background
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Background
An NDS-IS Advisory Group was convened by NISU and met in December 1994.
The Advisory Group comprised people who had been involved in development of the
NMDS (Injury Surveillance), version 1.1, and others interested in the further
development of injury surveillance. The groups represented at the meeting were
the Monash University Accident Research Centre, Tasmanian Injury Surveillance
and Prevention Project, the Queensland Injury Surveillance and Prevention
Program, Farmsafe Australia and NISU. Others attending the meeting were Ms
Judith Jones of ChildSafe, NSW; Dr P. Cameron, Director of Emergency Medicine
at Geelong Hospital; Dr R. Pitt, Director of Ambulatory Services at Mater
Children's Hospital; Dr Diane Jolly, Center for Child and Youth Health Studies;
and Dr Ron Somers, South Australian Health Commission Injury Prevention
Program.
The following principles have guided development of the NDS-IS. It should:
- Provide information seen as being of central importance by injury prevention practitioners;
- Be sufficiently small and simple to use (at least in its simplest form; it is hierarchical) to enable
its incorporation as part of the routine operation
of important types of data collection site (hospital emergency departments;
possibly also hospital inpatient services, coroners' offices, etc);
- Have good compatibility with the International Classification of Diseases
and with other widely-used data standards; and
- Be capable of providing reliable and valid data.
The main outcome of
the meeting in December 1994 was a recommendation to extend the existing
single-level surveillance data standard (the National Minimum Data Set for
Injury Surveillance, NMDS-IS) into the three levels of surveillance outlined
in the introduction and in Table 2.1. The extensions beyond NDS-IS Level 1, particularly for
Level 2 surveillance, were designed to provide more complete information than
the basic NMDS-IS version 1.1 and were of two types: extended classifications
and additional data items. The data items that were proposed for extended
classification at the second level were 'Type of Place', 'Type of Activity',
and 'Occupation'. Data items proposed for inclusion in Level 2, and which are
not part of Level 1, are injury 'Factors' (limited to about 100 categories),
'Use of protective device, clothing or equipment', 'Industry', 'Date and time
of injury', and an item or items to be along the lines of the NISPP
breakdown and mechanism items, but limited to a small number of
distinctive categories. The data item 'Consent for followup' was discussed at
length, without reaching consensus.
A third level for the injury surveillance standard was envisaged. It would
extend NDS-IS Level 2 to meet special purposes. Such purposes might be to
undertake surveillance of a particular type of injury (eg. farm injury, or
burns), or as the basis for a research project into a specific question. It was
recognised that Level 3 would not be fully developed in this edition of the
NDS-IS.
Version 2.1 of NDS-IS has minor corrections and coding changes. Refer to the revision history table for a summary of changes.
Several groups active in injury surveillance and prevention in Australia are
collaborating with NISU and with directors of emergency departments and
software developers, to incorporate the new data standard for injury
surveillance into computerised data collection systems. These systems are being
designed to meet the needs of hospital emergency departments for case
management data systems.
The data items and classifications comprising NDS-IS have been published in the National Health Data Dictionary versions 5 and 6.
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