Online renal database to help doctors, patients

LAHORE: The newly-established Pakistan Renal Registry (PRR) has become operational all over the country. The registry is meant to collect analyses and reports on data from renal centres (public and private). Health professionals say it is a landmark development in research and the country has become fully dependent on its own health professionals and resources to create a mega database on the kidney diseases and the patients.

Pakistan Society of Nephrology President Prof Dr Waqar Ahmad spoke about the development at the 12th biennial conference of the Society at a local hotel on Friday.
Speaking to Dawn, he claimed that Pakistan was lagging behind in research on the impact of kidney diseases and data registry and had to depend upon international health organisations.
“For any service to flourish, a mandatory attribute is self-audit and reflection and such attributes stem from data collected and analysed with the aim of self-correction and self-improvement,” he said.
He said the PSN had been vigorously working to develop a comprehensive clinical database of renal patients in the country since its inception in 1995. The project had started under the leadership of Prof Syed Jaffar Naqvi who worked tirelessly to make it a reality.
“The PSN has been able to take his mission further with all these efforts bearing fruit with the launch of the online Registry. The data covers information from varied spectrum of patients ranging from chronic kidney disease stage 1 to patients on renal replacement therapy,” he said.
“Through such databases we as renal healthcare providers can identify our strengths and weaknesses and determine where more effort is required,” Prof Waqar said. Furthermore, he said, this data could help identify any loopholes in the provision of healthcare to our patients.--> READ MORE