About NICOR
The National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR) exists to improve the care and outcomes of patients with cardiovascular disease by providing high quality comparative information from national clinical audits related to heart disease. Clinicians lead the audits, working together with information management experts. NICOR provides its NHS partners with audit feedback that is used to monitor and plan how to improve the day-to-day quality of care for patients with cardiovascular conditions.
NICOR became part of Barts Health NHS Trust on 1 July 2017. It was formerly part of the Institute for Cardiovascular Sciences (ICS) at UCL (University College London).
Governance
The National Congenital Heart Disease (NCHDA) Steering Committee represents key stakeholders including clinical, professional bodies and patient representation. The Steering Committee is responsible for promoting data collection within specialist paediatric centres through newsletters and user group meetings and monitoring audit data contribution and addressing issues as appropriate.
NCHDA Steering Committee Membership
| Name | Job Title | Representation |
| Dr Rodney Franklin (chair) | Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist (Royal Brompton Hospital) and Congenital Heart Disease Audit Clinical Lead | Congenital Heart Disease Audit |
| Alan Magee | Consultant Paediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiologist (Southampton) | British Congenital Cardiac Association (BCCA) President |
| Miss Carin Van Doorn | Congenital Heart Surgeon, Leeds General Infirmary | Chair SCTS Congenital Sub Committee |
| Dr Kate Brown | Consultant Intensivist (Great Ormond Street Hospital) | Research and Outcomes lead |
| Dr Kate English | Consultant in Adult Congenital Heart Disease Leeds General Infirmary) | Adult Congenital Heart Disease |
| John Stickley | Database Manager, Birmingham Children’s Hospital | Congenital Heart Disease Audit Technical Advisor |
| Olga White | Information Analyst and Clinical Data Manager, UHBristol Congenital Cardiac Services | Congenital Cardiology Database Managers Lead |
| Bernard Stedman |  | Patient/Public representation |
| Dr Jiaqiu Wang | Information Analyst | NICOR |
| Sarah Ajayi | Project Manager | NICOR |
| Shenaka Singarayer | Project coordinator | NICOR |
| Andrew Harrison | Senior Analyst Developer | NICOR |
| Lin Denne | Clinical data auditor | NICOR |
History of CCAD and Congenital Heart Disease Data
Monitoring the survival rates after cardiac surgery was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1977 with voluntary submission of data to the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. CCAD was established to provide national analysis of outcomes of cardiac surgery and therapeutic cardiac catheterisation. It was developed by the British Cardiac Society, the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons, and the British Paediatric Cardiac Association. CCAD provides three major advantages over previous national audit projects:
· data is collected electronically in a secure format.
· mortality and reintervention are tracked centrally by using a unique patient identifier (the NHS number)
· independent data validation is used.