A disease registry is a special database that contains information about people diagnosed with a specific type of disease.
Most disease registries are either hospital based or population based.
A hospital-based registry contains data on all the patients with a specific type of disease diagnosed and treated at that hospital. A population-based registry contains records for people diagnosed with a specific type of disease who reside within a defined geographic region. For example, a hospital can have a breast cancer registry with records for all the women in their breast cancer treatment program. The hospital-based registry would not include all the women with breast cancer in the community, since some women may go elsewhere for treatment. A population-based registry, on the other hand, would contain data on all the women with breast cancer who live in a certain area, regardless of where they receive their treatment.