Ambulance Data Set (ADS)

The data collected by the ambulance service is re-used by the Ambulance Data Set for purposes other than direct care and as such is referred to as a secondary uses data set. It defines data items, definitions and information extracted or derived from local information systems.

The ADS brings together information captured by emergency operation centres and which may have resulted in an unscheduled ambulance response.

Activity relating to patients of any age, about whom a call has been received by the emergency operation centre is within scope of the ADS. For further details, see the Flowing ADS data  and ADS v1.0 tools and Guidance web pages. 

The English Ambulance Services in scope are: 

• North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
• Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust
• East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
• South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
• South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
• London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• And also Isle of Wight, for whom there are separate management arrangements in place.

Further details of the scope of services for the ADS can found in the Ambulance Data Set - Requirements Specification.

The fully operational Ambulance Data Set will enable the replacement of unique effort required to create each of the following current national submissions (as the data will all be in the Ambulance Data Set): Ambulance Data Set data represents the consolidation of collection of data already used for the purposes listed below.

The following entries are an extract from the NHS England and NHS Improvement ‘Informatic Burden Review’ which shows how the Ambulance Data Set is expected to reduce burden:

• Definitive source – enables collection of data once in a standard format enabling subsequent reporting of:
• Model Ambulance
• Daily NHSI Metrics (BI)
• RT NHSI Metrics
• NHSEI Winter Room
• Weekly ARP Dashboard
• NDOG (National Director of Operations Group) Handover Information
• Police Data
• Prison Data

It is possible that the Ambulance Data Set can also achieve further burden reductions in the following areas:

• National FOI Requests
• AACE data requests 
• NDOG data requests
• NASMED (National Medical Directors Group) data requests
• Clinical Coding review data requests
• Go live data requests for national system changes
• Clinical Practice reviews and comparison data requests
• National Clinical Audits data requests

The data collected will support all stakeholders by providing a number of benchmarking opportunities to improve efficacy of patient care.  The data will identify best practice to drive organisational and clinical improvement as well as gaps in service provision to support better commissioning of services to support patients’ onward care with the most appropriate care provider.

The data will be used to realise the strategic ambition described at section 1.33 of the NHS Long Term Plan 2019  (extract below)

Section 1.33

“Without access to timely and accurate data we cannot maximise the opportunities to improve care for all patients.

The new ECDS is enabling us to better understand the needs of patients accessing A&E departments.

We will embed this into UTCs and SDEC services from 2020.

We will develop an equivalent ambulance data set that will, for the first time, bring together data from all ambulance services nationally in order to follow and understand patient journeys from the ambulance service into other urgent and emergency healthcare settings.”

The Ambulance data is collected at patient level and, where the Ambulance handover destination has a corresponding urgent and emergency care* data set, the data will be linkable in accordance with the Direction. 

*for example, where a patient is handed over to the Emergency Care Department, the corresponding data set to which the data is linkable is the Emergency Care Data Set.

The Ambulance Data Set is being implemented in two instalments in 2022. The CAD (Computer Aided Despatch) component of the data, which comes from the emergency operation centre, is implemented in 2022 under a covering assurance.

The EPR (Electronic Patient Record) component of the data, which has been populated by the clinician, is being implemented later in 2022. At this point, the data set will become a full data set and will be subject to an information standard.

The Ambulance Data Set information standard is expected in Summer 2022 and will be available via the DAPB (Data Alliance Partnership Board) web page.