The Norwegian Intensive Care and Crisis Register

The Norwegian Intensive Care Register (NIR) was established at the request of the Norwegian Directorate of Health (HDir) in 1998 to report the extent of intensive care treatment in Norway. NIR currently registers data from around 20,000 intensive care stays annually from around 70 intensive care units throughout the country. 

Since 2018, NIR has collaborated with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) on the registration and reporting of intensive care patients with influenza as part of the influenza surveillance. In February 2020, NIR and NIPH agreed to create a similar solution for the registration of intensive care patients with covid-19 in NIR and reporting of this to NIPH. The solution went live on March 10, 2020, the same day as the first patient was admitted to intensive care with covid-19 in Norway. Later in March 2020, the Western Norway Regional Health Authority was tasked with expanding the existing Norwegian Intensive Care Register to the Norwegian Intensive Care and Pandemic Register (NIPaR) to include all patients with covid-19 who were treated in the specialist health service.

Norwegian Intensive Care and Pandemic Register (2020-2023)

From 2020-2023, the Norwegian Intensive Care and Pandemic Register (NIPaR) was a national medical quality register with two parts, where the Norwegian Pandemic Register registered data on patients with covid-19 admitted to the specialist health service from March 2020 until the end of 2023.

NIPaR has played a key role in providing an overview of hospitalizations because of SARS-CoV-2. At the start of the pandemic, NIPaR was the main source of up-to-date knowledge. NIPaR provided key information about the number of people admitted to hospital and intensive care, their gender and age distribution and the predominant risk factors and was used as a basis for decision-making by the NIPH, HDir, the Ministry of Health and Care Services (HOD) and the government.

Norwegian Intensive Care and Crisis Register (2024-)

Evaluations after the covid-19 pandemic showed the importance of having a registry solution ready for the next event. The registry structure in NIPaR has now been expanded to include modules for future pandemic and crisis events as well as a resource module.

The Norwegian Intensive Care and Crisis Registrer (NIKreg) is a registry with three parts:

Norwegian Intensive Care Register: Remains unchanged and operates as before with registration of intensive care patients admitted to intensive care units in Norway, with updated emergency information.

Norwegian Crisis Register: A generic, scenario-based register that records data on patients in the event of infectious incidents, accidental incidents (man-made and natural), terrorist incidents and CBRNE incidents. The registry is activated according to defined criteria.

Resource module: Will contain a comprehensive overview of infrastructure and available resources such as bed capacity, equipment and personnel so that decision-makers can plan the handling of different types of crisis incidents.