About The Information Centre for health and social care

The Information Centre (The IC) is England's authoritative, independent source of health and social care information. It works with health and social care providers nationwide to provide the facts and figures that help the NHS and social services run effectively.

Among its activities, The IC runs a programme of national clinical audits, including national heart disease audits.The audits aim to improve the treatment of patients and improve patient care and outcomes. They offer reliable information to help health professionals to continually measure and improve care by comparing their work to specific standards and national trends. Healthcare professionals can use the audit findings to identify and maintain improvements.

The information on this site has been collected by using The IC's Central Cardiac Audit Database (CCAD), which is used to collect information for the National Heart Disease Audits.

Who runs CCAD?

The congenital heart disease CCAD is directed by a steering committee of experts who advise on the development of the database, the types of data we ask centres to collect, and how the data should be analysed and presented. The managerial, governance and financial aspects of congenital CCAD are overseen by the Project Board.

The Steering Committee
Dr John Gibbs (Chairman and lead clinician, Leeds General Infirmary)
Dr Rodney Franklin (Vice Chairman, Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital)
Dr David Cunningham (Project Manager)
Dr Shak Qureshi (President of the British Congenital Cardiac Association)
Mr Chuck McLean ( Representing President of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons)
Mr Nadeem Fazal (CCAD service manager)
Mr Andrew Harrison (CCAD development)
Ms Lin Denne (Validation coordinator)
Gruschen Veldtman (adult congenital cardiology, Southampton General Hospital)
Prof Martin Elliot (Great Ormond Street Hospital)
Mr Thomas Witter (Congenital cardiac data manager's group, Guy's, St Thomas' & Eveilna hospitals)

The Project Board
Dr John Gibbs (chairman & lead clinician, Leeds General Infirmary)
Dr David Cunningham (Project Manager)
Dr Shak Qureshi (President of the British Congenital Cardiac Association)
Mr Chuck McLean ( Representing President of the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons)
Professor Roger Boyle (National Director for Heart Disease and Stroke)
Dr Sheila Shribman (National Director for children, young people and maternity)
Mr Nadeem Fazal (CCAD service manager)
Ms Helen Laing (Health Quality Improvement Partnership)
Ms Lin Denne (Validation coordinator)
Ms Anne Keatley-Clarke (Children’s Heart Federation)


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 provide 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.

In 2000, the Department of Health funded CCAD to collect data from all centres for congenital heart disease in the United Kingdom. Data has been collected since then from all centres.
CCAD has been collecting this information on behalf of The Healthcare Commission since 2004.