Science - PICU Registry

A tool for benchmarking

Worldwide, the availability of qualitative medical data registries is booming. Data collection in Pediatric Intensive Care is growing exponentially over the last 20 years. ( Bennet 2014). Registries as PICANET (UK) VPS(USA), ANZPICR ( Au-NZ) and PICS(NL) gave insight in many aspects of PICU activity and initiated benchmarking in order to contribute to quality, safety and efficiency improvement. The ESPNIC data-taskforce is working on a common European goal and format.

In Belgium the MICA project ( Monitoring Intensive Care Activity), sponsored by the government and the IC College was launched as a pilot project with Epimed Solutions in 2013 and reported in 2017. After the MICA pilot project, many Belgian hospital ICU’s joined the MICA community and are willing to pay for data integration by EPIMED and benchmark their activity as a common goal to promote quality and performance of ICU’s.

Likewise, on request of the former ministry of health, the IC College Pediatric Working Group, designed a format for the Be-PICU 0.1 Registry, according to GDPR requirements, with data collection by online manual input in a central database governed by Uniweb, a Belgian IT solutions company. Uniweb has a longstanding collaboration with the IC college for IC quality questionnaires. 8 hospitals participated and the coverage of total PICU admissions was estimated as 1/3. The first registry year was completed in 2018 and a full detailed report is available at the IC college website. This report shows the feasibility of Belgian PICU registration and gives a detailed insight in their activity and potential quality issues. Today Be-PICU 0,1 continues registries and a next data transfer from Uniweb is expected in the first months of 2021 in order to analyze and report. The process, as such is very time consuming, with a notable decline in registrations each year. We concluded that registration and monitoring of PICU activity is useful to promote collaboration and benchmarking, but electronic coupling with hospital PDMS systems, laboratory and administrative data should be addressed. A standardized validated report is mandatory.

In that respect, joining the MICA community as a MICA4kids chapter, makes sense using the same Epimed Monitor platform to extract and integrate data in a unique central database, with a specific PICU standardized reporting output.

The first step is the launch of a FREE pilot project in Belgian PICU’s during 3 months to investigate the reliability and content of the existing PICU program of EPIMED, in order to eventually adapt the PICU program to Belgian and European needs.

Following PICU’s are willing to join the pilot project: UZ Ghent, ULB HUDERF, CHU Liège, ZNA- Queen Paola, UCL St luc, (UZ Brussels).

Additional information can be found at

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