Indian Institute of Medical Research (ICMR) is planning to roll out a national database of COVID-19 patients, in collaboration with the Health Ministry and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
The database is going to have details of patients admitted to hospitals across the country. The decision to create the database was taken to be able to understand the treatment and how it can be improved.
The idea is still awaiting approval from the common ethics committee of the ICMR and once approved a total of 15 institutions are expected to help in creating this network and get hospitals and medical colleges on board.
Dr Balram Bhargava, ICMR Director-General, told The Indian Express:
We are starting a clinical Covid registry wherein 15 mentor institutions (across the country), which are institutes of national importance, will be helping us. The purpose of these mentor institutions is to encourage other hospitals and medical colleges to participate.
More than 100 hospitals are expected to take part in the exercise and the idea is to create a database of COVID patients across the country to be able to help the institutions looking for COVID patients for clinical research.
The registry will provide data like mortality rate, sex of the patients and mortality time. This will help doctors and scientist understand what intervention is needed at what stage for the patient.