UK National Ophthalmology database: optimising surgical safety

The UK National Ophthalmology Database was established under the auspices of The Royal College of Ophthalmologists to collate anonymised patient data from electronic medical record systems that collect nationally agreed datasets for the purposes of national audit, research and revalidation of doctors. Following appropriate permissions data conforming to nationally agreed datasets were remotely extracted and anonymised. In 2011 data were extracted from 31 centres on a total of 382,275 patients including trabeculectomy operations. National audits and inter‐surgeon and inter‐institutional comparisons can be automated and allow surgeons to view their performance in the context of their anonymised peers.