In its simplest form, a disease registry could consist of a collection of paper cards kept inside "a shoe box" by an individual physician.
Registries are less complex and simpler to set up than electronic medical records that according to a recent survey are only used by 9% of small offices where almost half of the US doctors work.
Other tests like Pap smears are also useful to keep track in registries because there is evidence that when done annually in women of certain ages groups can detect and prevent cervical cancer.
[12] However, it is getting more and more common to use data of different healthcare and disease registries innovatively for different purposes such as for generating evidence for healthcare efficiency, market access planning and pharmacovigilance[13] Countries like Australia, Britain, Norway, Sweden,[14] and America[15] have a national joint replacement registry to track patients with artificial joints.
In Australia, regulators use such data to force manufacturers to justify why poorly performing hips or knees should remain available, and products have been withdrawn as a result.
In Sweden several years ago, surgeons alerted by their national registry stopped using a badly flawed hip long before their American counterparts did.
For example, the United Kingdom, rewards physicians according to 146 quality measures related with 10 chronic diseases that are tracked electronically.