Estimating births using GP registration data

<p>A technical note and subsequent Update on the use of&nbsp;General Practitioner (GP) registration data to estimate the number of live births occurring in London.</p> <p>The&nbsp;technical note presents analysis into the&nbsp;relationships between GP registration and birth estimates data, which indicates that GP registrations can be used to predict birth estimates with a good level of accuracy at local auhtority level.</p> <p>Using the approach outlined in the note, a strong indication of births can be obtained up to eleven months ahead of the release of official data.&nbsp;The note presents birth estimates for the year to mid-2015 based on analysis of GP registration data and explores the likely accuracy of such estimates.</p> <p>Intelligence Unit Update 04-2016 compares&nbsp;the birth&nbsp;predictions&nbsp;made in the technical note with&nbsp;subsequently released official estimates.&nbsp;The accuracy of the results is compared with that obtained from standard projection methodologies employed by the GLA and ONS.&nbsp;</p> <p>The Update presents estimates of births for the year to mid-2016 based upon recent GP registration data obtained by the GLA.</p> <p>**Update February 2023**</p> <p>Estimates of recent births using an updated version of this approach are now available <a href="https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/modelled-estimates-of-recent-births" target="_blank">here</a> </p> <p>The code used to produce these estimates is available on <a href="https://github.com/Greater-London-Authority/nowcast-birth-estimates" target="_blank">GitHub</a>.</p>