National Ability Supports System (NASS)
National Health Information Systems Unit of the Health Research Board (HRB).
The HRB and Health Service (HSE) Executive are joint controllers of NASS data.
In 2019 NASS replaced the National Intellectual Disability Database (NIDD, established 1995) and the National Physical and Sensory Disability Database (NPSDD, established 2002). NASS is one of four national health information systems managed by the HRB’s National Health Information Systems Unit and hosted on the Unit’s web-based platform, LINK.
To collect data on the HSE-funded disability services that people use or require in a 5-year period.
New services provided to service users aged over 65 years are out of scope as these are managed by HSE Older Persons’ rather than Disability services.
National.
NASS data collection is carried out on an annual basis.
NASS contains national data relating to HSE disability-funded services provided to service users.
Data is recorded by service providers, both HSE and non-HSE.
HSE; Department of Health, Department of Children, Equality Disability, Integration, and Youth; policy-makers; and researchers.
NASS collects demographic, socioeconomic, diagnostic and outcome data on service users in addition to details about the assistive technology and services they receive and/or require.
Yes.
https://www.hrb.ie/data-collections-evidence/disability-service-use-and-need/how-data-is-collected/
PPSN is not captured. A field to capture the IHI is included in the dataset. Awaiting assistance from HSE’s Access to Information & Health Identifiers programme to populate this field.
Sex, age, employment status, ethic/cultural background, type of living accommodation are captured by NASS.
Trained users within HSE and non-HSE organisations who provide HSE disability-funded services record information about their service users and the services they receive or require in the web-based system. Each user record is reviewed annually.
Data may be recorded manually or uploaded to the system in a file containing multiple records.
The data collection period runs from January/February to end December each year.
No formal clinical coding/ disease classification scheme is used. Currently diagnoses are coded using a coding system based on ICD-10.
A move to the SNOMED terminology is planned.
Each annual dataset contains approximately 36,000 existing or newly registered records.
Reports are published annually and are available on the HRB website, www.hrb.ie.
Requests for NASS data can be submitted using the data request form, NASS Data Requests.
No.
Additional information and documentation regarding NASS is available in the Disability section of the HRB website.