The NTDS consists of two separate components:

• The NTDS Dataset
• The XSD Standard

The NTDS Data Dictionary contains the recommended elements to be collected at the national level for every injured patient meeting the national inclusion criteria. The NTDS does not represent all injury information that individual states or hospitals may want to collect. 

States at a minimum MUST collect the data elements that are noted in the new data dictionary. The NTDB will be creating a plan to receive comments and changes for future updates to the dataset.

NTDB National Trauma Data Standard Dataset Overview

The new dataset is a subset of information describing a complete trauma event. This includes information which is considered important from a trauma system, trauma health professional, and a trauma patient's perspective. The data elements within the NTDS dataset provide documentation of the trauma system performance and clinical care.

Many data elements are a component of a Hospital Medical Record, and the majority of the remaining data elements are important for quality management and performance improvement initiatives.

The dataset includes information that is typically recorded by EMS and hospital personnel for each patient encounter, although some of the information can be obtained electronically from EMS or medical records, or medical devices.

• Download NTDS Dataset Schema (XML)
• Download all NTDS XSDs v2.2.1 (xsd)
• Download NTDS Data Dictionary (pdf)

The XSD Standard

The XML Schema definitions for the NTDS are defined in the Dataset Schema listed above.

Within these XSD files, each of the over 50 data elements is defined to allow standardized data exchange between trauma registry data systems. (See the XML Data Portablility Diagram.)

• Download NTDS XSDs (xsd)

Explanation of XML

XML: eXtensible Markup Language provides the format to store and move data from one location to another.

Explanation of XSD

XSD: XML Schema Definition provides a definition on how the data will look and be formatted (e.g. Age is a numeric field and can only be between 0-125).