File image of the entrance gate of the ICMR, New Delhi. | ANI
Text Size:

New Delhi: A registry of hospitalised COVID-19 patients across the country is being mooted to collect real time data which will help improve treatment outcomes, analyse trends in the progression of the pandemic and calibrate response, officials said.

The ICMR in collaboration with the Health Ministry and the AIIMS is planning to set up the National Clinical Registry which will help researchers and policy makers understand effectiveness of investigational therapies, adverse effects taking place and generate evidence for improving the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

“The aim is to collect data of the hospitalised COVID-19 patients like clinical and laboratory features, their demographics, comorbidities, treatment outcomes, complications in all age groups among others,” officials said.

The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 and the illness it is causing has so many unknown parameters that are a barrier to the proper understanding and management of the disease, they said.

“A systematically collected, comprehensive database covering different regions of the country will enable both researchers and policy makers to generate pertinent hypotheses, to inform crucial understanding of COVID 19, to detect trends in the progression of the pandemic and to accordingly calibrate response to the pandemic,” an official said.

Fifteen institutions of national repute including the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, AIIMS Delhi, AIIMS Jodhpur, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru and Armed Force Medical College in Pune will connect with the hospitals and medical colleges to get them on board.

These 15 institutions would be the registry sites and would be mentoring around 100 COVID-19 hospitals which would be called satellite centres from where the data would be collected as part of the exercise.

We are deeply grateful to our readers & viewers for their time, trust and subscriptions.

Quality journalism is expensive and needs readers to pay for it. Your support will define our work and ThePrint’s future.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

The proposal has been sent for approval to the Central Ethics Committee on Human Research (CECHR) of the ICMR.

“The data will help improve the clinical management protocols as the repository would help us know which drug is working better in which age group, effectiveness of investigational therapies and adverse effects taking place. The idea is to generate evidence for improving the treatment of COVID-19 patients,” another official said.

 

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube & Telegram

News media is in a crisis & only you can fix it

You are reading this because you value good, intelligent and objective journalism. We thank you for your time and your trust.

You also know that the news media is facing an unprecedented crisis. It is likely that you are also hearing of the brutal layoffs and pay-cuts hitting the industry. There are many reasons why the media’s economics is broken. But a big one is that good people are not yet paying enough for good journalism.

We have a newsroom filled with talented young reporters. We also have the country’s most robust editing and fact-checking team, finest news photographers and video professionals. We are building India’s most ambitious and energetic news platform. And we aren’t even three yet.

At ThePrint, we invest in quality journalists. We pay them fairly and on time even in this difficult period. As you may have noticed, we do not flinch from spending whatever it takes to make sure our reporters reach where the story is. Our stellar coronavirus coverage is a good example. You can check some of it here.

This comes with a sizable cost. For us to continue bringing quality journalism, we need readers like you to pay for it. Because the advertising market is broken too.

If you think we deserve your support, do join us in this endeavour to strengthen fair, free, courageous, and questioning journalism, please click on the link below. Your support will define our journalism, and ThePrint’s future. It will take just a few seconds of your time.

Support Our Journalism