Using two on-going HIV studies to obtain clinical data from before, during and after pregnancy for HIV-positive women

Background The UK Collaborative HIV Cohort (UK CHIC) is an observational study that collates data on HIV-positive adults accessing HIV clinical care at (currently) 13 large clinics in the UK but does not collect pregnancy specific data. The National Study of HIV in Pregnancy and Childhood (NSHPC) collates data on HIV-positive women receiving antenatal care from every maternity unit in the UK and Ireland. Both studies collate pseudonymised data and neither dataset contains unique patient identifiers. A methodology was developed to find and match records for women reported to both studies thereby obtaining clinical and treatment data on pregnant HIV-positive women not available from either dataset alone.