Data Elements

Data Elements are the data items used within Data Sets.

Within this publication, the names of Data Elements are styled like this: NHS NUMBER (MOTHER).

Data Elements are defined using Attribute definitions, although they may be refined for a specific use case.

Data Elements specify how data are used in a particular business context. For example, when a child is born, a mother and a child are people the NHS collects data about. Each PATIENT will be identified using an NHS NUMBER. The NHS NUMBER attribute of the PATIENT class is therefore used both in the context of the mother and the baby. In this example there are two separate Data Elements, NHS NUMBER (MOTHER) and NHS NUMBER (BABY). These are both linked to the common NHS NUMBER attribute and follow the same rules, however the particular contexts of a mother and baby are different.

The Open Standard for Government for encoding characters for government digital services and technology is UTF-8, an encoding form for Unicode character sets.

"Permitted Codes" and "Default Codes" for a Data Element are shown as the example below: