Known as the Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet), this programme aims to help continually improve how children and young people (CYP) are treated, and cared for, in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in the United Kingdom and Ireland during life-threatening acute or critical illness. The audit collects personal and clinical data on all children with a clinically determined need for paediatric intensive care and organisational data from the PICUs. It audits the quality of care delivered against the Paediatric Critical Care Society (PCCS) standards, which cover the whole pathway – from the initial referral of children to paediatric intensive care, specialist transport, and admission.
PICANet plays a vital role in providing data to inform clinical decisions, improve service planning, and support better outcomes for babies, children, young people and their families.” Carli Whittaker, Chair of PICANet Steering Group
Supporting improvement
PICANet undertakes and supports quality improvement (QI), working with healthcare teams to help them see what they are doing well and where they can improve. The audit works towards a series of healthcare QI goals at the national level, whilst also supporting participating organisations to undertake local QI projects by enabling access to real-time local data downloads and reporting tools. QI resources can be obtained from the PICANet website.
Additional data sources
In addition to HQIP-published reports below, publicly available data can be found on the PICANet Data Dashboard on the PICANet website.
Latest reports
Paediatric critical care – State of the Nations report 2025
- Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet)
The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) has released a paediatric critical care summary report,...
Paediatric critical care report
- Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet)
The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) has published a report summarising paediatric critical care...
PICANet Paediatric critical care state of the nation report
- Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet)
The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) has published the National Paediatric Critical Care Audit...
Paediatric Intensive Care – State of the Nation Report 2022 (PICANet)
- Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet)
The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) has published its State of the nation report...
Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network Annual Report 2021
- Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet)
The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) has published its latest annual report, which describes...