Emergency Department Clinical Registries: A Scoping Review

Background: Emergency Departments (ED) are vital within the health system, often representing the first hospital contact for patients who are undifferentiated and may be critically ill. Although advancements in digital technology and increasing use of electronic medical records in health systems have led to the dramatic growth of large data sets, the presence of ED clinical registries in the literature is currently unknown. Objectives: Our scoping review aims to investigate the extent of emergency department clinical registries reported in peer-reviewed literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review of ED registries in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR checklist. Searches were undertaken in PUBMED, EMBASE and SCOPUS. Studies were included if they described a clinical registry with a focus on the ED. Results: We identified 60 manuscripts with 27 identified as primary registries (6 had a general scope, 21 were condition or population specific). The remaining 33 papers were investigational reports sourced from the iden-tified primary registries. Funding sources were identified for some registries: 3 by re-search grants, 2 by medical colleges, 5 by government organizations or initiatives, 2 by pharmaceutical companies and 3 by research institutes. No funding information was provided in 12 studies. The reported registry periods ranged from 31 days to 4018 days (median 365 days, IQR 181-1309 days). A grey literature search revealed that 6 registries were ongoing. Conclusions: Internationally there appears to be a wide degree of het-erogeneity with primary ED registry publications and secondary publications. Inte-grating ED registries with a learning health system model will enable clinicians to serve their community proactively and with a focus on quality, rather than the current safe-ty-focused approach.