CARDS (Cardiology Audit and Registration Data Standards)

The purpose of the CARDS (Cardiology Audit and Registration Data Standards) project, which was developed by the Irish Department of Health and Children in partnership with the European Commission and the ESC, was to identify data to be collected in clinical cardiology practice for use in institutional, national and international registries, for quality insurance (audit) and international comparison of health care processes and outcomes.

The conference, which took place in Cork on May 10-11, aimed at presenting the preparatory work done by the three expert committees, one for each of the following topics:

• Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (Dataset, 242k)
• Clinical electrophysiology (Dataset, 302k)
• Acute Coronary Syndromes (Dataset, 176k)

Revision is planned for these first dataset and new topics will be adressed in the near future.

Two representatives Representatives from each of the 25 member states’ ministries of health (1 expert in cardiology and 1 expert in public health policy) were invited to the conference to reflect on a possible agreement on which data should be collected and on the definitions of the data fields. The conference’s objective was also to discuss their dissemination and implementation.


For more precision, you may download the following documents:

• background document (PDF 670 Kb)
• Programme of the conference (PDF 349 Kb)
• the data standards for each of the 3 subspecialties