Registers are raising the bar: past, present… Future

News

Past:

To better make sense of people's experiences with MS so that we can best support them in their lives, we need better information. This was highlighted by numerous speakers at the earliest 'Raising the Bar for MS' event.

The UK MS Register, was commissioned by MS Society and launched in 2011.

Present:

The Register currently has 48 hospital sites and over 12,000 people with MS feeding in data.

It is a single space comprising multiple forms of data which can be cut in numerous ways. Cutting the data in different ways can produce subsets of data such as for smoking and pregnancy.

The accessible data and active participants in the Register meant that, within a week of proposing a study into COVID and MS at the very start of lockdown in the UK, over 5,500 people with MS were signed up to participate.

On day 2 of Raising the Bar 2020, we will hear from:

Future:

The COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges around virtual appointments and data sharing between professionals and people with MS.

The Register is currently developing:

  • an online portal for pre-consultation assessments housing
    • assessments for the person with MS to complete prior to their appointment,
    • their latest MRI scans.
  • a way to gather data from
    • online psychological testing,
    • natural language processing of letters and other text data.

The Register is only as useful as the data it holds, which is reliant on you, as clinicians, getting involved. By partnering with the Register, you will:

Further information regarding the pregnancy and smoking registers:

Encouraging excellence, developing leaders, inspiring change

MS Academy was established five years ago and in that time has accomplished a huge amount. The six different levels of specialist MS training are dedicated to case-based learning and practical application of cutting edge research. Home to national programme Raising the Bar and the fantastic workstream content it is producing, this is an exciting Academy to belong to.