What is NOD?

The National Ophthalmology Database is a collaborative Quality Improvement and Assurance programme run by The Royal College of Ophthalmologists. Its purpose is to identify improvements, provide advice, develop standards, guidance, policy and practice to inform patient care, patient safety, training of care providers, service delivery and access to data for health improvement research.

NOD helps to drive quality improvement standards and is managed by The Royal College of Ophthalmologists. NOD supports our vision to ensure everyone has access to and receives high quality eye care for prevention and treatment of eye disease.

Using insights from the NOD, we are able to improve patient outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and implement changes in the delivery of services at a national and local level. By continuing to monitor the outcomes, we can continue to improve patient care and safety.

NOD informs aspects of care such as:

  • risk factors of surgical treatment of cataracts, informing patient choice, shared decision making, consent information and training of surgeons
  • informs regulatory bodies in the UK collaborating with the Care Quality Commission, Getting it Right First Time (ophthalmology) and the National Eye Care Restoration and Transformation Programme
  • setting evidence based standards on what determines good care, where patients have received it
  • highlighting health inequalities such as access to care and monitoring how this changes over time
  • providing a national overview of the impact of interventions and empowering local comparison to drive change in services

The two areas of care currently analysed by the NOD are:

  1. Cataract surgery
  2. Age related Macular Degeneration (AMD) services

Want more?

If you have any questions about the information available on this site, please email noa.project@rcophth.ac.uk