Building a diabetes registry from the Veterans Health Administration's computerized patient record system.

Background: Little information is available describing how to implement a disease registry from an electronic patient record system. The aim of this report is to describe the technology, methods, and utility of a diabetes registry populated by the Veterans Health Information Systems Architecture (VistA), which underlies the computerized patient record system of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in Veteran Affairs Integrated Service Network 10 (VISN 10).

Methods: VISN 10 data from VistA were mapped to a relational SQL-based data system using KB_SQL software.