Jul 20, 2023

ADD TOPIC TO EMAIL ALERTS Receive an email when new articles are posted on Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on . Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com . Back to Healio Clinicians reported more than 51 million patient visits to the registry last year. Verana Health, the exclusive data curation and analytics partner for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, recently released the 2022 annual report on its partnership with the AAO’s IRIS Registry. Among the highlights of the report are the large and growing volume of data available in the IRIS Registry. In 2022 alone, clinicians reported more than 51 million patient visits to the IRIS Registry. Cumulatively, more than 490 million billable patient encounters have been added to the IRIS Registry since 2013. Verana Health directly ingests electronic health record data from the IRIS Registry into its VeraQ population health data engine. Direct ingestion offers a refresh rate that is nearly four times faster than in the past, while enhancing data fidelity and traceability. The large volume of longitudinal data within the IRIS Registry makes it possible to accurately analyze trends over time. For example, according to the data, ophthalmic procedure volumes recovered quickly after the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020 and are now continuing to rise at a similar or faster annual rate than before the pandemic. The 2022 annual report takes a closer look at dry age-related macular degeneration and geographic atrophy (GA). The GA patient cohort in the IRIS Registry has grown tremendously, from 36,000 patients in 2016 to more than 300,000 patients currently. These GA patients are concentrated in the Southern region of the U.S. and are mostly followed by retina specialists, but a substantial number are cared for by other ophthalmologists or optometrists. On average, patients in the GA cohort had data available from 13.72 clinic visits with associated notes in total and an average of 3.15 ± 2.38 years of follow-up in the IRIS Registry. The report highlights research on dry AMD and GA using data from the IRIS Registry. In the first known study of its kind, real-world data were used to characterize the distribution of visual acuity (VA) for patients with dry AMD and evaluate risk of progression for all stages of disease. Another study explored the differences in VA for patients with either bilateral GA or unilateral GA with contralateral choroidal neovascularization, as well as subfoveal vs. nonsubfoveal lesions. Verana Health is poised to meet the needs of researchers and clinicians who seek to better understand GA with Qdata GA. Qdata GA is a thoughtfully curated data set that incorporates imaging data and links it to other variables such as VA in order to better understand risk factors for progression and potentially identify subtypes of GA. I’m excited about the work we have done at Verana Health to directly ingest EHR data, link millions of images, and create highly curated data sets that have the potential to contribute to scientific understanding and improve clinical care for a variety of ophthalmic conditions. References: