The Canadian Depression Research and Intervention Network (CDRIN) Maritimes Registry

The need for a registry: It is increasingly recognized that major advances in the treatment of mental disorders will require large scale clinical research. Recently demonstrated ways of completing large-scale research with finite resources include the routine use of electronic health records (EHR), data linkage and randomized registry trial. Use of EHR is the most efficient way of rapidly obtaining large amounts of information. However, EHR cannot completely exclude confounding by indication and other unmeasured variables. Therefore, tests of treatment effects require experimental designs that cannot be replaced by routine health records data. The gold standard for testing the effects of treatment in an unbiased way is the randomized controlled trial (RCT), where measured and unmeasured confounders are balanced through the randomization process and any remaining confounding is due to chance alone. RCTs are valued as the highest level of evidence, but are costly and take significant time to be completed, partly because of the need to screen a large group of individuals to identify eligible participants.

The most efficient unbiased test of interventions, new treatment modalities and novel ways of treatment delivery is a method that combines EHR use with the randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology: the randomized registry trial (RRT). The RRT takes advantage of a registry of individuals with available information to identify a large number of individuals suitable for an RCT. The RRT approach is efficient especially if the same information (e.g. diagnosis and treatment history) is used repeatedly for different purposes. The same information can be used for clinical purposes, service improvement and multiple research projects. RRT will allow obtaining answers about the efficacy of new treatments and management strategies significantly faster and at a much lower cost than traditional RCTs. Therefore, the investigators propose to establish a registry that has the capacity to conduct RRTs. The proposed registry will be integrated with similar efforts across Canada. Jointly, this collaborative network of registries will facilitate fast and economical testing of new treatments, which is urgently needed to advance the therapeutic options for people with depression and related conditions.