I just came across a very interesting initiative, taken by Ian Callander,an Australian neonatologist; the development of an open-source software platform for collection of clinical data during neonatal care.

As I understand it, the data can be used for quality control, follow-up statistics, and clinical audit.

More info is posted here: http://home.iprimus.com.au/Callanders/

Thank you Stefan

I have a particular interest in Neonatal Data and made the following point items in my recent email to you, which I put up for discussion. The Neonatal Database as shown on the website ( http://home.iprimus.com.au/callanders ) will be available for general use free of charge very shortly. Contact me if you are interested.

1. Hospital Administrations have been spending large amounts of money on data systems, but have not concentrated on what the clinician wants at all.

2. Clinical Audit has been done on the cheap; even the Vermont Oxford Group which is the largest audit group (~250 NICU's) is still a consortium that uses subscriptions to run, and still only collects a very small number of summary data items

3. Canadian Neonatal Network (CNN) is now running government funded audit, but still analyses only similar data, but at least this now shows that audit is valuable.

4. Advances in Technology means that the Neonatal Units will increasingly have data downloaded from equipment, which will both replace paper and make data more accessible.

5. Data from multiple sources will become 'connected' and will in turn offer the opportunity to audit data of a different magnitude, this includes long term data (not just neonatal follow-up data but also data into adult life)

6. Quality of the data needs to be considered when performing audit (even though the data item may be the same for clinical and audit use), but sheer quantity may still make some data (especially equipment

derived) useful.

7. The current 'gold standard' of scientific evidence (RCT) is very expensive, time consuming, minutely focussed and often out of date at the time of publication. Audit data has in the past been considered by the research purist to be unworthy of too much effort. If quasi real-time massive population (+ international collaboration?) data collections can be analysed using data mining tools, then we have the capacity to detect associations well before detection would be possible by a human (if at all). In some cases the 'audit evidence' would be so strong that a RCT would not even be necessary.

8. Emerging countries with large populations but restricted finances (such as India) have the potential to collect audit data (if they have a PC and we give them free software) that if amalgamated would not only advance their own care but that of advanced countries because of scale.

9. The non-commercial neonatal database illustrated on the website will be available by the end of this year for anyone who wants it (by DVD with everything including instructional movies). This is to offer advanced audit capability (plus other trimmings) to those that would not otherwise be enabled to collect it, however my ultimate goal is the amalgamation of large scale audit data from any source, and for the recognition of the value of such collection by governments.

Dear Dr.Callander,

Greetings.

we appreciate and applaud your willingness to share your work with everyone.

It is fantastic and we can analyse our data very easily.

I will post your URL in our NNF so that many can use and benefitted.

Great work and thanks for sharing.