Clinical disease registries in acute myocardial infarction

Table 3 Advantages and disadvantages of common registry types

Registry type	Benefits	Negatives
Academic	Limited external pressures for study; more flexibility in developing the dataset; lends itself to research; collaboration with many academic institutions and with Professional Bodies	Access to data provided by external sites may be limited; potentially limited funding; danger of “mission creep”-increasing data required; participating clinicians may become divorced from the academic group; difficult to enforce participation
Insurance	Ready access to data through billing information; large amounts of data held; potential for internal data linkage; large populations to study; excellent case ascertainment	Inability to expand dataset outside that determined by insurance company/HMO; difficult to influence/alter datafield definitions; full access to data may not be available due to commercial sensitivity
Industry sponsored	Well-funded; support for training of data collectors and encouragement of data entry; often based on access to new treatments	Limited sites; confidentiality clauses may restrict dissemination of findings; not all data widely available; may have strict patient selection (restricted to those receiving particular intervention); often time limited; less direct clinician control
Government	National “reach”; can promote and mandate high levels of participation and data collection; collaboration between multiple agencies; large population for study	Limited sense of clinical ownership

HMO: Health maintenance organization.