Top Benefits of Patient Registries
05.12.17
Within the domain of medical and clinical research, questions overshadow suitable answers and the search for those answers is a long and winding road. Patient registries are a great platform for the collection of important and relevant information which improves the chances of finding revolutionary answers for many research questions. In addition to being valuable to discoveries in rare conditions and diseases without appropriate cures, patient registries are the ideal tools to use when trying to determine the best ways of caring for patients in small hospitals or larger institutions. With potential benefits to patients, health professionals and organizations, patient registries are advantageous in the following ways.
- With most registries designed for specific disease conditions, they carry important personal information such as the medical history of patients that allows the accurate estimation of incidence and prevalence for researchers in relation to natural history which can be used to make care pathways improved and advice to patients more accurate. All this can greatly affect life expectancy as health care standards can be effectively raised even when there is no cure.
- The readiness of data in patient registries, especially in electronic database systems, facilitates the identification of patients that qualify for certain clinical trials. Also, analysis of particular interventions and their efficiency measures are made very easy with patient registries.
- Patient registries facilitate international co-operation for the purpose of the legal sharing of data for health advancements, especially in conditions of rare diseases.
- The patient registries with wider scopes of data collection like mutations, previous treatments, symptoms, mental health, lifestyle etc. provide a huge pool of information that can be used to make quite a number of conclusions in the related area of focus such as epidemiology, comparative analysis of treatment outcomes, effects of lifestyle on progression of disease, effects on mental health, etc.
- Patient registries are often handled by professionals in every domain from collection to management which can be combined with the reliability of electronic systems to make data safe and accurate, minimizing human error. With computerized patient registries, processing and analyses are faster and a lot more accessible.
Clinical and medical practices are becoming fast automated and the use of machines is being employed to enhance results for development in this field.
For a local physician, participating in a patient registry can bring benefits like;
- Enhancement of knowledge about some particular disease conditions and their management.
- Opportunity to compare and contrast specific findings in practice with those from other more representative and larger databases.
- Improved understanding of patient perspectives in relation to therapeutic outcomes and approaches.
- The registry database can be used to carry out exploratory research so as to get findings for publishing.
- Communication and connections with similarly minded professionals are strengthened.
- The community-based physician also uses patient registries to easily transition into research by taking part in initiatives of ‘’low stakes’’.
- Patient reports from registry information are reminders of appropriate interventions and tests for practitioners.
- Progress reports give ultimate information on the areas of concern while denoting progress with treatment.
Health organizations, local practitioners and patients gain many advantages from patient registries, and with the growing use of technological solutions, such as Data+ Research, establishing one isn’t as hard as it used to be.