EURETINA LAUNCHES RETINAL OUTCOMES PROJECT

The Retinal Outcomes Project is an exciting EURETINA initiative. It combines providing members with a real-time audit tool, while in the background collecting a disease specific database from which complexity adjusted outcome research can be done. All patient and physician ID are anonymised, which avoids any IT data protection hurdles or ‘Big Brother’ concerns. The project is being formally launched at a symposium tomorrow, at 14.30 in the Athena room.

“Doctors are coming under increasing scrutiny from regulators so it is important to be able to prove that we are good at what we do. Real-time audit of results is the best way of doing that. Such data are becoming a requirement in many parts of Europe,” said Dr Alistair Laidlaw, the EURETINA lead for this project. 

“Big prospectively collected data sets also allow us to do important outcome research. It means that hard to answer clinical questions can be addressed from real-world practice, rather than relying on expensive, hard to set up randomised trials. In this way EURETINA members cannot only perform personal audit, but also be contributing to treatment-changing research,” he added. 

The first disease to be targeted is retinal detachment. “It is really important to recognise that this is the first of hopefully many such datasets. This project should not be of interest to just the VR surgeons, the potential is huge,” said Dr Bill Aylward, a former president of EURETINA and this year’s Kreissig Award recipient.

“We have set up a very quick and easy-to-use online data collection tool. Outcome is measured at two months following surgery,” he added.“A complete patient record takes about three minutes to enter. When developing the system, we have been very careful to limit the data requirements and be pragmatic about outcome measures. It has to be used on a day-to-day basis by busy clinicians, not academics,” said Dr Aylward.

Concerns have been expressed about individual doctors’ results being made public. The registration process and data collection do not allow either the surgeon or patient to be identified. An anonymous email address can be used and registration details are not linked to EURETINA membership details.The system has been extensively piloted by members of the British and Eire Association of Vitreoretinal Surgeons (BEAVRS), with complete data collected on over 2,000 cases so far.

“We are very confident that it is ready to use. Any EURETINA member who is performing VR surgery can register to use the system, there is no fee. It is also a principle that the doctors who enter the data will be acknowledged in any publications that come out of it, and apply to be on the data analysis group. Giving people ownership of the data can only help with participation,” said Dr Aylward.