AAO’s IRIS Registry Evaluated

The 2016 IRIS Registry is an exceptional, large, real-world database chock full of information about ophthalmic care and treatment outcomes, researchers recently noted.

More than 17 million patients from 7,200 US-based ophthalmology practice comprise the data set. Investigators extracted electronic health record data, looking specifically at demographic characteristics, top-coded disease conditions, and visit rates. Among their observations:

• The IRIS Registry can answer questions about practice patterns, use, disease prevalence, clinical outcomes, and the comparative effectiveness of different treatments. 
• Limitations are similar to those seen with EHR data: documentation errors, missing data, and the lack of images. 
• Researchers can submit proposals through organizations such as the Research to Prevent Blindness and American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Chiang MF, Sommer A, Rich W, Lum F, Parke D. The 2016 American Academy of Ophthalmology IRIS Registry (Intelligent research in sight) database: Characteristics and methods. Ophthalmology. 2018;125(8):1143-1148. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2017.12.001.