The maternity units

Starting from 1994 each year, aproximately 100 public or private maternity units from all over France have participated in the AUDIPOG Sentinel Network. In total, 256 maternity units have taken part in this network since its creation. However, the maternity unit group which participates in the Sentinel Network has been modified as the years go by. As the participation in the Sentinel Network is voluntary, the maternity unit distribution according to their legal status and to their geographical situation is different from the rest of the country. A re-weighting technique allows us to obtain valid indicators at a national scale.

The population

The participation in the network can last from one month per year to several months or even the whole year.
The database only contained single pregnancies from 1994 to 1998, and later on the whole of single and multiple pregnancies since 1999.
In total, the AUDIPOG sentinel network database is currently composed of 822 061 pregnancies distributed as follows

The "common information section"

The Sentinel Network is based on the pooling of the "common information section" which can be found in every perinatal file.
An export format is sent to the maternity units participating in the network; it indicates the expected data structure. As the content of the AUDIPOG file was modified in 1999, the data files are now accepted in 2 different formats (in the former structure or the new one).
The files received in the new structure include the 300 variables that currently make up "the common information section", which is essential to the evaluation of practices and perinatal care networks.