Addressing priorities for surgical research in Africa: implementation of a multicentre cloud-based peri-operative registry in Ethiopia.

In resource-constrained settings, where inequalities in access to and quality of surgical care results in excess mortality, peri-operative care registries are uncommon. A south-south collaboration supported the implementation of a context specific, clinician-led, multicentre real-time peri-operative registry in Ethiopia. Peri-operative information, including the Ethiopian Ministry of Health's national 'Saving Lives through Safe Surgery initiative', was linked to real-time dashboards, providing clinicians and administrators with information on service utilisation, surgical access, national surgical key performance indicators and measures of quality of care. We recruited four hospitals representing 285 in-patient beds from the Amhara and Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples regions and Addis Ababa city, and reported on 1748 consecutive surgical cases from April 2019 to April 2020. Key performance indicators included: compliance with the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist in 1595 (92.1%) surgical cases; adverse events during anaesthesia in 33 (3.1%) cases; and surgical site infections in 21 (2.0%) patients. This collaboration has successfully implemented a multicentre digital surgical registry that can enable measurement of key performance indicators for surgery and evaluation of peri-operative outcomes. The peri-operative registry is currently being rolled out across the Amhara region and Addis Ababa city administration. It will provide continuous granular healthcare information necessary to empower clinicians to drive context-specific priorities for service improvement and research, in collaboration with national stakeholders and international research consortiums.