Our purpose is to develop a marketable turn key, computerized system for inputing and processing medical information as related to prenatal, intrapartal and neonatal (perinatal) events surrounding birth. Through this system it would be possible to produce accurate, timely and complete prenatal data and analyses. Potential outputs of the data system include production of an automated birth log, birth certificate, hospital discharge summaries, registries of high risk or birth defect affected newborns, as well as perinatal mortality/morbidity reports. Other uses would be for quality control and cost containment. Multi-hospital aggregates of such uniform perinatal data will yield regional or network summary data which is indispensable for public health planning and evaluation. Methodology consists of mechanisms for automated collection, encoding, and analysis of birth data with formatting and production of appropriate reports. During Phase I it is expected that feasibility and value of The Perinatal Data System for a hospital can be demonstrated. During Phase II a refinement of the approach and implementation in a Perinatal Region/Network would be expected. Commercial applications would be for hospitals; for regional health care, peer review and planning agencies; and for State and Federal agencies.
