Development and Implementation of a Multisite Registry Using Structured Templates for Actionable Findings in the...

Area of Science:

• Radiology and Medical Imaging
• Health Informatics
• Data Management

Background:

• Structured reporting is crucial for standardizing the communication of actionable findings in radiology.
• Previous efforts to create multisite registries for renal imaging data faced challenges in template adoption and data integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To scale structured report templates for categorizing actionable renal findings across multiple health systems.
• To establish a centralized registry for collecting deidentified patient and radiology report data.

Main Methods:

• Three academic radiology departments implemented identical structured templates for adult renal ultrasound, MRI, and CT reports.
• Deidentified HL7 report data and patient sociodemographic/clinical data were transmitted to a centralized registry over a two-year period.
• An automated algorithm extracted template categories, with radiologists addressing missing or incomplete templates.

Main Results:

• Over 160,000 radiology reports were included in the registry, with high template utilization rates achieved after addendum requests (ranging from 94.6% to 99.9%).
• Sociodemographic and clinical data were successfully matched for over 94% of reports across sites.
• Identified barriers included regulatory, cultural, and technological challenges in establishing a multisite registry.

Conclusions:

• Unified structured report templates for actionable kidney findings are adoptable across health systems.
• Secure transmission of deidentified report and patient data to an external registry is feasible.
• This approach facilitates the collection of valuable, evidence-based population imaging outcomes.