Evaluation of Research Accessibility and Data Elements of HIV Registries

Patient registries represent a long-term data collection system that is a platform for performing multiple research studies to generate real-world evidence. Many of these registries use common data elements (CDEs) and link data from Electronic Health Records.

This study evaluated HIV registry features that contribute to the registry's usability for retrospective analysis of existing registry data or new prospective interventional studies.

We searched PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov (CTG) to generate a list of HIV registries. We used the framework developed by the European Medical Agency (EMA) to evaluate the registries by determining the presence of key research features. These features included information about the registry, request and collaboration processes, and available data. We acquired data dictionaries and identified CDEs.

We found 13 HIV registries that met our criteria, 11 through PubMed and 2 through CTG. The prevalence of the evaluated features ranged from all 13 (100%) having published key registry information to 0 having a research contract template. We analyzed 6 data dictionaries and identified 14 CDEs that were present in at least 4 of 6 (66.7%) registry data dictionaries.

The importance of registries as platforms for research data is growing and the presence of certain features, including data dictionaries, contributes to the reuse and secondary research capabilities of a registry. We found some features such as collaboration policies were in the majority of registries while others such as, ethical support, were in a few and are more for future development.