New Vascular Ultrasound Registry launched, will initially focus on carotid artery disease

The registry will combine noninvasive, vascular ultrasound testing data with vascular treatment and outcomes data, making it possible to analyse the relationships between diagnosis and care provided to patients with vascular disease.

The Society for Vascular Ultrasound (SVU), the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS), and Medstreaming-M2S, have announced the development of the Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) Vascular Ultrasound Registry. The new registry is an expansion of the SVS VQI and will allow more comprehensive analysis and improvements in the care of patients with vascular disease.

Groundbreaking in this registry will be the inclusion of actual ultrasound images which will make future machine analysis and learning possible from the collected registry, which currently does not exist, a press release regarding the registry’s launch notes.

The Vascular Ultrasound Registry’s initial efforts will focus on collection and analysis of data associated with the diagnosis and treatment of carotid artery disease. The development of the registry and ongoing research related activities are being led by a VQI Vascular Ultrasound Registry Task Force, chaired by physicians David Dawson and Gregory Moneta.

It is anticipated that the registry will provide the means and an impetus to promote vascular laboratory standardisation and thereby improve patient care. “Noninvasive vascular testing has evolved to the point where it is being relied upon heavily to direct patient medical management decisions”, said James Wilkinson, SVU executive director. “With the rapid growth and diversification in the number of medical specialties providing testing, there is a lack of standardisation in the delivery of testing and the reporting of results. Targeted, yet broad-based research will significantly contribute to standardisation efforts.”

Fundamental to the VQI Vascular Ultrasound Registry is the ability to link technical data and images to the clinical data collected from the SVS VQI’s existing registries. “The addition of the VQI Vascular Ultrasound Registry, to the existing VQI registries, will further aid the VQI’s mission of improving vascular care by enhancing the data we can make available to our members.  We are also pleased that this registry expands the reach of the VQI to include vascular technologists, sonographers and other professionals in the vascular laboratory setting. The VQI has long embraced a team-approach to care with 59% of VQI membership coming from specialties outside of vascular surgery, including cardiology and radiology,” said Jens Eldrup-Jorgensen, medical director of the SVS Patient Safety Organisation.

Efficient data capture

A key to the success of any registry is providing means for efficient data capture. The VQI Vascular Ultrasound Registry leverages the infrastructure of the preexisting registry with linkages to ultrasound images from the vascular laboratory. “Medstreaming-M2S’s specialty based workflow solutions, along with its clinical data management system for structured data aggregation can be used for uploading of data and images,” noted Wael Elseaidy, Medstreaming-M2S CEO. Initially, only a select number of current VQI sites will participate, but Vascular Ultrasound Registry participation is expected to be broadly available in the next phase of the programme, along with an increase in registry content and scope of projects.

“Unique to the VQI Vascular Ultrasound Registry is the inclusion of an imaged based registry component, which will include the actual ultrasound images acquired during patient studies. When combined with powerful analytics and potential for machine learning, we foresee opportunity to normalise ultrasound image data submitted from different sites, develop new benchmarking standards, further explore and promote utilisation of all the information embedded in the images,