Our very own Digby Lund (ARI ExecutiveCommittee Member) attended the Renal Registry Informatics Meeting back in September 2015.

These meetings are held twice yearly at the Registry and are FREE for all company representatives to attend.

The meeting began with a very helpful overview of the latest (2014) report highlighting some of the data regarding patient numbers with some specifics; i.e. unit performance in areas such as vascular access.

The main focus was devoted to the RR Dataset v4 which goes live on 1^st January 2016. This will collect far more data than before and include much more detailed information. It should in turn allow more extensive analysis in terms of outcomes. In the past for example, co-morbidities data has been variable. v4 will collect additional data including medication, AKI, ND-CKD, etc. Any patient who’s eGFR falls below 30 will automatically enter the system and data will continue to be collected even when/if their renal function recovers.

There is the potential to request specific customised data by submitting a “work proposal” which would then be costed. Further details on the RR web site.

Of particular interest during the day, was a presentation looking at Data visualisation (the use of infographics) and even raises the possibility of a cartoon version of some aspects of the RR report – thus improving the analysis and readability of information.  The suggestion was that this could be piloted through the renal patient view initiative.

Further information about this particular presentation is available at the following link

https://www.renalreg.org/presentations/ukrr-informatics-meeting-data-matters/

Digby’s closing notes – Overall an excellent meeting which is FREE for company representatives to attend.  The next meeting is due to be held in April 2016 – specific dates yet to be announced.