Reassessing and Extending the European Standards of Care for Newborn Health: How to Keep Reference Standards in Line with Current Evidence

Abstract

The European Standards of Care for Newborn Health (ESCNH) were launched in 2018. After three years, the first standards were reassessed and revised to align with current evidence. Moreover, new standards regarding emerging topics were developed. The aim of this paper is to outline the approach adopted for reassessing, revising and developing new standards for the ESCNH. We established a systematic approach to reassess the ESCNH including a public and an expert consultation. The public consultation was open to all stakeholders for feedback whereas the expert consultation followed a targeted consultation method. For developing new standards, a similar process to the original development was implemented. Overall, 20 standards were reassessed and six standards were developed. For the revision process, 23 experts were involved in the targeted consultation method and 253 questionnaires were completed via the open consultation. We demonstrated a systematic approach to update and extend reference standards, which can be applied by other developers of standards. Thereby, we highlighted that including a public and an expert consultation is crucial to improve quality and to ensure that all stakeholder perspectives are integrated.

Correction: Geiger et al. Reassessing and Extending the European Standards of Care for Newborn Health: How to Keep Reference Standards in Line with Current Evidence. Children 2024, 11, 179

“…In the original publication [ 1 ], the Institutional Review Board Statement was not mentioned: No ethical approval was required for the study in accordance with the requirements of ethical committees such as the medical University of Munich (LMU) ( (accessed on 14 December 2023)) and the Bavarian ethical committee ( (accessed on 14 December 2023)) as the data of the online survey was anonymised for the analysis and neither sensitive nor person related data was processed. All data was processed in strict complaints with GDPR requirements.…”