Article Text
Abstract
Injury is a major global health issue, resulting in millions of deaths every year. For decades, trauma registries have been used in wealthier countries for injury surveillance and clinical governance, but their adoption has lagged in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Paradoxically, LMICs face a disproportionately high burden of injury with few resources available to address this pandemic. Despite these resource constraints, several hospitals and regions in LMICs have managed to develop trauma registries to collect information related to the injury event, process of care, and outcome of the injured patient. While the implementation of these trauma registries is a positive step forward in addressing the injury burden in LMICs, numerous challenges still stand in the way of maximizing the potential of trauma registries to inform injury prevention, mitigation, and improve quality of trauma care. This paper outlines several of these challenges and identifies potential solutions that can be adopted to improve the functionality of trauma registries in resource-poor contexts. Increased recognition and support for trauma registry development and improvement in LMICs is critical to reducing the burden of injury in these settings.
- accident prevention
- electronic health records
- public health
- quality improvement
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Footnotes
Contributors LR, NS, and MH conceived of this manuscript; LR wrote the manuscript; NS, CA, AN, and MH critically revised the paper and provided valuable feedback. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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Competing interests MH is a founder at T6 Health Systems, a company that specializes in electronic health record software.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.