The Umbria Diabetes Register

The project PROMODR (Progressive Model of Diabetes Register) funded by an Italian Ministry of Health grant, aimed at the realisation of a prototype regional registry for diabetes mellitus and its validation in a pilot experience. Primary data sources are the General Practitioners (GPs) and the Diabetes Centres (DCs) of the Umbria region already equipped with electronic medical records (EMR). A minimum registry data set was created consisting of personal data, metabolic indices, late diabetic complications and therapy. The GPs EMR system was modified in order to automatically identify, extract encrypt and send via e-mail to a central regional server the administrative and clinical data related to the diabetic patients. At this level the data are merged with the information derived by the DCs. The functionality of the prototype has been evaluated in a pilot experience consisting of two consecutive phases: the first collecting data from 7 GPs covering different areas of the region and a population of around 10680 inhabitants and the second one involving 13 DCs. Data from more than 12000 diabetic subjects were collected. Different examples indicators have been calculated. This pilot study showed an accurate functionality of the prototype without major errors in all the different phases of data collection and transmission.