Ambulance Data Set (ADS) data product

The Ambulance Data Set (ADS) is the national data set for data collected by the ambulance service in order to follow and understand patient journeys from the ambulance service into other urgent and emergency healthcare settings. It allows for:

• the capture of information about response times and the acuity of ambulance patients
• granular diagnostic data to ensure an enhanced understanding of need, activity and outcomes
• consistent monitoring of data across local and national initiatives, such that it will be possible to identify patterns that may be amenable to targeted interventions and improved public health
• understanding causes of rising demand and the value added by ambulance trusts

ADS data is used for non-clinical purposes, such as research and planning health services. The data collected will support all stakeholders by providing benchmarking opportunities to improve efficacy of patient care. The data will identify best practice to drive organisational and clinical improvement as well as gaps in service provision to support better commissioning of services to support patients’ onward care with the most appropriate care provider.

ADS can be used to:

• monitor trends and patterns in ambulance activity
• improve patient care through better and more consistent information
• assess effective delivery of care
• allow better planning of ambulance and healthcare services
• reveal health trends over time
• develop, monitor and evaluate government policy
• support NHS and parliamentary accountability
• improve communication between health professionals

The Ambulance Data Set (ADS) is the national patient level data set for ambulance service activity.

Reporting of ADS data commenced in 2021 through a phased implementation by reporting organisations. Submission of ADS was fully onboarded by all Ambulance Trusts in 2023 to enable the reporting for the financial years commencing April 2023.

ADS data covers ten NHS Ambulance Trusts throughout England. It does not include ambulance trusts outside of England.

Each ADS ambulance record contains a wide range of information about the individual patient and the ambulance activity including:

• clinical information, such as chief complaint, acuity, investigation and treatment
• patient information, such as age group, gender and ethnicity
• administrative information, such as call start and end date and time, time resource arrived and left receiving location
• geographical information such as location of incident

Details of all the data fields present within the analytical ADS data product may be found in the Ambulance Data Set (ADS) Analytical Technical Output Specification including identification of keys for linking between tables.

In providing a data product that supports the different requirements of its customers, ADS also ensures that these requirements are met through pseudonymisation and data minimisations.

A driver behind the phased implementation of reporting of the ADS was to enable insights to be realised as quickly as possible. As a multi-use data product, universal reporting coverage may not be required. Therefore, the ADS data product is available from 2021, with which users are able to make their own assessment of the use of the data product for their own specific needs.

NHS England takes a daily feed of the submitted ADS data via FHIR. It is then subject to additional processing to create the curated ADS data product view throughout the year.

The data which populates the Ambulance Data Set is derived from two sources within ambulance services: one is the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system and the other is the Electronic Patient Records (EPR) system. The Ambulance Data Set project board decided to split the pilot of the ADS into two stages (CAD and EPR).

The programme is now entering a new phase of delivery, with a refined focus on improving the coverage and data quality of the CAD dataset, pausing the EPR for the time being.

Monthly and annual strategic decisions are still to be determined, which will help to accommodate trade-off between timeliness of data provided through the daily data asset, and additional curation, completeness and accuracy of the data for the monthly and annual data assets.

The immediate focus area for 2025/26 data quality improvement is to enable the retirement of the current aggregated situation reports.

This approach acknowledges the need to pause the EPR workstream, allowing the programme to build momentum through early success with CAD.

The set of indicators have been developed with stakeholders, and NHS England are supporting Ambulance Trusts improve completeness and data quality for these where required. Details are published on the NHS England Futures page: Ambulance Data Set data quality improvement. (You will need a NHS Futures account to open this page). 

Data quality reports are only accessible directly within the NHS England Data Platform Service environment. Publicly available data quality reports are still being determined.

If you are interested in using ADS data, this is on the backlog for development. Any queries can be raised via Data Access Request Service (DARS) team.