National Minimum Data Sets
New releases
Review and evaluation of Australian information about primary health care: a focus on general practice (10 December 2008)
National community services data dictionary, version 5 (21 July 2008)
National health (version 14) and national community services (version 5) data dictionaries CD-ROM set (21 July 2008)
A guide to data development (27 February 2007)
Popular titles
 Australia's welfare 2009 |
 Australia's health 2008 |
A National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) is a minimum set of data elements agreed for mandatory collection and reporting at a national level.
A NMDS may include data elements that are also included in other National Minimum Data Sets.
A NMDS is contingent upon a national agreement to collect uniform data and to supply it as part of the national collection, but does not preclude agencies and service providers from collecting additional data to meet their own specific needs.
Key words that describe a National Minimum Data Set are:
- Minimum
- Standards
- Agreement
- Collection
- Reporting
Arguably, the most important aspect of a National Minimum Data Set is the agreement. Without agreement between all relevant parties, a National Minimum Data Set does not exist.
A National Minimum Data Set agreement includes specified data elements as well as the scope of the application of those data elements. Currently only the health sector has National minimum data sets. In the health sector this agreement is exemplified by the National Health Information Agreement.
The agreement to collect a specified set of data elements is essentially a policy issue.
The National Health Data Dictionary, identifies data elements from National Minimum Data Sets. A national minimum data set is a subset of the metadata type called Data Set Specifications (DSS). Descriptions of these NMDSs can be found in METeOR by clicking on this link for the Health sector.