Such an approach imposes a huge work load to contributing renal units and weakens the possibility of timely data transmission. On the other hand, Registries which have already adopted electronic patient files, experience that automated data extraction and transmission is hampered by the lack of shared extraction protocols and/or suitable software. In other areas in our profession, such as in prospective clinical trials, well conceived surveys and in prospective cohort studies, electronic data collection and transmission has proven to be feasible and has shown a great potential to get the high quality data we strive for. Standardisation of clinical indicators of quality of care and the development of easy-to-use data extraction tools is of paramount importance for the success of QUEST.

In this regard we need fresh financial resources for achieving our goal of establishing a web-based system of data collection of well standardised clinical indicators. Jointly with several National and Regional registries we conceived the 2005 QUEST submission to the EU commission. As announced in a previous newsletter, the final EU decision about this proposal is still pending. However, at this stage we perceive it is unlikely that we will be rewarded for that submission. Given the excellent evaluation received by the 2005 QUEST project, we have embarked ourselves in a new submission for the 2006 wave of EU proposals. We have refined the objectives and the managerial plan of our proposal and renamed it Nephro-QUEST, a name that gives immediate reference to the area of interest. Our managing director Kitty Jager and the Amsterdam Registry staff, an immense resource of the ERA-EDTA, are making a great effort for framing an even better, immaculate proposal, again involving all interested European registries and other partners. We remain confident that we will eventually be able to set up the information system that the QUEST initiative sorely needs to realise the virtuous goal of establishing an open, shared, territory of collaboration to advance the quality of renal care and epidemiology research on renal disease in Europe.