PAROS FAQ
Find answers to common questions about joining and contributing to the PAROS Clinical Research Network, covering data methods, security, and research focus areas.
1. What does participating in PAROS involve?
Participation in PAROS requires a liaison person at each participating site or EMS agency to serve as the local PAROS administrator, and to assist in communications between the participating site/agency, country representative(s) and PAROS CRN personnel.
The liaison person will work closely with PAROS CRN personnel to:
(i) determine the most appropriate methods for starting data collection and program implementation, and
(ii) monitor data collection for the EMS agencies and participating hospitals.
2. What are the methods of contributing data?
There are two main methods of contributing data to PAROS CRN:
(i) Direct entry online via the online data capture system (https://eparos.org/);
(ii) Export field entry which uses exported data from participating sites to auto-populate the PAROS registry.
3. Is the PAROS Online Data Capture System (https://eparos.org/) secure?
Yes. We use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption technology in transmitting patient health information to ensure integrity and privacy. The entire system is protected by cutting edge fire protection, and off-site data archiving to assure data integrity, even in the event of a catastrophe.
4. Does PAROS CRN use identifiable patient information?
The patient’s name and/or a unique identification number are used to match the EMS record with hospital outcomes. Once the record is determined to be complete by PAROS CRN personnel, unique identifiers will be removed to de-identify the record.
5. Who has access to the data?
A participating site (whether EMS agency or hospital) would have access to all the data contributed by that site. Personnel at that site would not have access to data from other participating site(s). PAROS CRN personnel would have access to data from all sites for monitoring and de-identification purposes.
6. Since the Case Report Form (CRF) used by PAROS CRN is in English, would the various languages used in the local electronic medical records affect the ability to contribute data to the Network?
The PAROS Online Data Capture System uses an electronic CRF which is in English. However, many of the data systems participating in PAROS CRN are in their native languages (Japanese, Korean, Chinese etc). For the International Study on Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest, we will adopt a common taxonomy jointly developed with the participating countries and all participating sites will align their data variables to this common taxonomy. Pre-agreed data fields collected at the sites will then be assigned a number (i.e, coded) and matched against the common taxonomy. This allows data in the various languages to be translated into numbers as the medium for data to be imported into PAROS. Accurate translation of data fields from other languages to English would be crucial to ensure accurate mapping of the data.
7. How do you compare or use hospital-based Electronic Medical Records (EMR)?
We usually extract our study data manually from the EMR of any hospital. The data can be downloaded and imported into our database, or physically entered by our site coordinators.
8. Are there any criteria the hospitals should meet before they can be involved in PAROS CRN?
Although the key hospitals in PAROS CRN tend to be tertiary hospitals, the Network also involves community hospitals.
9. Is the patient population captured by PAROS CRN representative of the general population?
PAROS CRN is a network that is EMS-based (using ambulance catchment areas), and it also includes the hospitals supporting these catchment areas. Since we collect data from both EMS agencies and hospitals, data captured by PAROS CRN is a population-based and would be representative of the population.
10. Do you collect blood for genetic/genomic studies?
No, we currently do not conduct genetic/genomic studies.
11. Is it possible to involve only a few of the regional hospitals from PAROS CRN for a proposed study, rather than the entire list of sites in the Network?
Yes, it is possible to select only certain sites to conduct studies, depending on the focus.
12. What are PAROS CRN’s areas of focus for research?
PAROS CRN focuses on acute conditions requiring ambulance and emergency care (cardiac arrest, trauma, heart attack, stroke, breathing difficulty, asthma, etc). The strength of the Network lies in the ability to get data from ambulance and emergency departments / hospitals.
We are happy to discuss the possibility of any research collaboration related to Pre-hospital and Emergency Care.