Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS)#
Last modified: 12 Oct 2026
1. Summary#
MSDS includes demographic and clinical information for each mother and their baby. Among these are appointment dates, diagnoses, delivery details, birthweight, and hospital episodes. The data is presented in 11 tables, each covering a separate aspect of the maternity care pathway (e.g., care activities, baby demographics). MSDS v2.0 replaced the less comprehensive v.15 in April 2019.
| Dataset Descriptor | Dataset-specific Information |
|---|---|
| Name of Dataset in TRE | NHSE_MSDS |
| Citation (APA) | Data Services, NHS England (NHSE). (2025). NHS England: Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS). UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC). https://doi.org/10.71760/ukllc-dataset-00684-04 |
| Download Citation | Citeproc JSON BibTeX RIS |
| Series | NHS England |
| Owner | NHS England |
| Copyright | Copyright © (2026), NHS England. Data re-used with the permission of NHS England. All rights reserved. |
| Temporal Coverage in the TRE | 04/2019 - ongoing |
| Geographical Coverage | England |
| Participant Count | N/A - Dataset comprises of multiple auxiliary tables |
| Number of Variables | N/A - Dataset comprises of multiple auxiliary tables |
| Number of Observations | N/A - Dataset comprises of multiple auxiliary tables |
| Key Link | https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-sets/maternity-services-data-set/guidance/general-msds-guidance |
| Keywords | Maternity,Pregnancy,Labour and delivery |
| Latest Extract Date | 2024-04-26 |
| Specific Restrictions to Data Use | None |
| Build a Data Request | https://explore.ukllc.ac.uk/ |
2. Metrics#
TBC
3. Version History#
| Version | 4 |
|---|---|
| Version Date | 09 Sep 2025 |
| Number of Variables | 126 |
| Number of Observations | 6470 |
| DOI | TBC |
| Change Log | TBC |
4. Documentation#
We are currently building a documentation storage system which will host useful documents related to datasets and data owners. We will surface these documents on Guidebook.
5. Useful Syntax#
Below we will include syntax that may be helpful to other researchers in the UK LLC TRE. For longer scripts, we will include a snippet of the code plus a link to the UK LLC GitHub repository where you can find the full scripts.