Birth Defects Information System

The Birth Defects Information System (BDIS) statute was enacted in 2004 to establish and maintain an information system containing data on the cause, treatment, prevention, and cure of major birth defects. Policy and administrative direction for BDIS was developed by a multi-disciplinary work group including representatives and experts in epidemiology, medicine, insurance, health maintenance organizations, genetics, parents of children with birth defects, voluntary organizations and local public health. The BDIS database started in 2005 with infants born or treated in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties. The Birth Defects program actively collects information from hospital and clinic charts of pregnant women or infants diagnosed with certain congenital conditions. For live births, the conditions must be present at birth and identified in the first year of life. Birth defects that develop during pregnancy that result in fetal death (stillbirth) are included beginning with 2019. As of December 2017, BDIS monitors approximately 96 percent of Minnesota births for the presence of over 60 birth defects.

How is the information used?

• Monitor the occurrence of birth defects to detect potential public health problems, trends, predict risks, assist in response to birth defects clusters, and detect changes in birth defects rates
• Evaluate impact of primary prevention efforts designed to improve health outcomes
• More accurately target intervention, prevention, and services for communities, patients, and their families
• Inform health professionals and citizens of the prevalence of, risks for, and prevention of birth defects
• Assure that families are connected with appropriate services in close partnership with local public health
• Conduct scientific investigations and surveys of the causes, mortality, methods of treatment, prevention, and cure for birth defects
• Modify, as necessary, the birth defects information system through demonstration projects

What are the conditions included in the Minnesota Birth Defects Information System?

For more information on many of these conditions, visit the CYSHN Diseases and Conditions Identified in Children.

* Monitored for children born from 2005 through 2014.
^# Monitored starting with children born in 2016.