Main objective of Indian Joint Registry is to help patient safety, bring stability to the market

In the wake of several patients suffering from the impact of faulty hip implants, it is vital that India has a national joint registry to track such patients and avoid future episodes. Richard Armstrong, Head, Health Registries, Northgate Public Services tells Viveka Roychowdhury about the response to the Indian Joint Registry

- Viveka Roychowdhury

What has been the progress since the launch of the Indian Joint Registry (IJR) in April 2019?

We have been successful in registering doctors and hospitals on IJR who have contributed 28,364 records of which 2,274 are hip procedures and 26,090 knee procedures. With the data available and tracking of the implant performance, we will be able to identify the faulty implants and get it replaced from a better performing one, saving the patient from harm. The implant tracking will ensure that the manufacturers are more careful and conduct proper research and testing before the product launch. The main objective of IJR is to help patient safety and bring stability in the market, avoiding past issues with faulty implants as we had seen with the Johnson & Johnson episode in India .

Kindly share results of the pilot study started in April 2016, which ran for 9 months with 7 doctors participating across 4 cities in India. Did the procedure need tweaking for the India market?

The pilot has evidenced that doctors in India are willing and able to document their cases, and to track the long term outcomes of patients. Whilst this requires a small amount of time and effort on behalf of the hospital staff to ensure data is entered into the system, doctors have shown that the value delivered from the registry makes this effort worthwhile to enable long term tracking of patient outcomes.

The pilot highlighted trends in clinical practice across India, detailing the types of implants in common use, and the common types of procedures undertaken. This was compared across different hospitals, and also in comparison to data from other registries from around the world. (See visuals giving details of.

How many surgeons, hospitals have now signed up from India?