A collaborative maternity and newborn dashboard (CoMaND) for the COVID-19 pandemic: a protocol for timely, adaptive monitoring of perinatal outcomes in Melbourne, Australia

  1. Lisa Hui
  2. Melvin Barrientos Marzan
  3. Stephanie Potenza
  4. Daniel L. Rolnik
  5. Joanne M. Said
  6. Kirsten R Palmer
  7. Clare L. Whitehead
  8. Penelope M. Sheehan
  9. Jolyon Ford
  10. Natasha Pritchard
  11. Ben W. Mol
  12. Susan P. Walker
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Abstract

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a range of unprecedented disruptions to the delivery of maternity care globally and has been associated with regional changes in perinatal outcomes such as stillbirth and preterm birth. Metropolitan Melbourne endured one of the longest and most stringent lockdowns in 2020. This paper presents the protocol for a collaborative maternity dashboard project to monitor perinatal outcomes in Melbourne, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

De-identified maternal and newborn outcomes will be collected monthly from all public maternity services in Melbourne, allowing rapid analysis of a multitude of perinatal indicators. Weekly outcomes will be displayed as run charts according to established methods for detecting non-random ‘signals’ in health care. A pre-pandemic median for all indicators will be calculated for the period of January 2018 to March 2020. A significant shift is defined as ≤ six consecutive weeks, all above or below the pre-pandemic median. Additional statistical analyses such as regression, time-series, and survival analyses will be performed for an in-depth examination of maternal and perinatal outcomes of interests.

Ethics and Dissemination

This study has been registered as an observational study with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12620000878976).

Strengths and weaknesses of this study

  • ⍰ This project is the first clinician-led, multi-centre perinatal data collection system for metropolitan Melbourne.

  • ⍰ It complements the state government data collection, with the significant benefits of more timely and flexible reporting of outcomes, and granular detail on emerging areas of concern.

  • ⍰ The study relies on primary source coding of exposure and outcomes from each hospital that have not been internally validated during the study period.

  • ⍰ Data from private maternity hospitals, containing 25% of Melbourne births, are not available.

  • ⍰ This resource will support data-informed hospital pandemic responses through to the end of 2022.

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