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Blog
How specialty societies can successfully lead a registry vendor migration and vendor transition
Sep 10, 2025
Medical Specialty Societies (MSS) often reach a pivotal moment when their existing registry platforms no longer align with their evolving needs or strategic goals. Migrating to a new registry vendor can become an important and key strategic move. The following discussion delves into the essential aspects of registry migration and vendor transition, providing a roadmap for a successful transition.
Why consider a registry transition?
Many MSS are contemplating whether to sunset their current registries or transition to new vendors. Key drivers for this decision include:
- Business model evolution: Establishing an identity beyond being a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR), diversifying revenue streams, and providing more member benefits. It is increasingly important to explore new opportunities for leveraging these platforms beyond their traditional role in the Quality Payment Program (QPP). Expanding the registry’s utility can include supporting clinical research, enabling real-world evidence studies, and fostering innovation in patient care through data-driven insights.
- Technological advancements: As registry needs become more sophisticated, MSS must navigate the rapid evolution of technology, including the adoption of AI-based chart abstraction tools that streamline clinical data extraction from diverse sources. The integration of small language models enables advanced data insights, unlocking new opportunities for real-time analytics and deeper understanding of clinical trends. Embracing and leveraging artificial intelligence to automate and enhance data collection and analysis positions registries to deliver greater value, adaptability, and innovation in a changing healthcare environment.
- Regulatory compliance: MSS must stay ahead of evolving standards from CMS and QPP, including digital quality measures, robust interoperability, and capturing patient-reported outcomes that reflect real-world care.
Preparing for a successful transition
Ensure strategic alignment
When transitioning to a new registry vendor, it is important to ensure they align with your strategic goals, whether those goals center on accelerating research, enhancing quality improvement, expanding services, or all the above. As a registry leader, assess the vendor’s capacity to scale and innovate in ways that matter for your specialty. For example, if your registry needs to capture insights from unstructured data (like pathology reports or medical images), ensure the vendor’s technology supports advanced tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract data from PDFs and images.
To achieve this, develop a business case that outlines why a transition is necessary. Conduct a gap analysis comparing your current system’s capabilities to the society’s strategic objectives and future requirements. Engage stakeholders, such as the Board of Directors, to secure resources and momentum for a successful transition.
Gather member feedback
Member participation and satisfaction are critical to registry sustainability. Conduct surveys and questionnaires to gather feedback from diverse roles – administrators, clinicians, and quality leaders. Go beyond surveys by hosting focus groups and stakeholder workshops to uncover deeper insights.
Invite representatives from various member segments (e.g., a mix of academic hospital participants, private practice users, data analysts, etc.) to discuss their experience with the current registry and their expectations for the new platform. These conversations can reveal underlying challenges — perhaps navigation issues, data entry bottlenecks, or desired features — that quantitative surveys might miss. Additionally, consider implementing a pilot testing phase with a small group of members before full deployment. This pilot group can provide hands-on feedback about usability, data migration quality, and any functional quirks. Their experience allows you to make necessary adjustments (and ensure the vendor addresses any issues) prior to the wide rollout. It also helps create early champions: those who participated in the pilot can share success stories and tips with the broader membership, easing the overall transition. By actively involving members in the planning and testing stages, you demonstrate that the new registry is being built with their needs in mind — which will go a long way toward maintaining trust and enthusiasm through the migration process.
Plan the registry roadmap
Data migration is one of the most challenging aspects of transitioning to a new registry vendor. Your existing registry likely contains years of critical clinical information that must be accurately transferred. This process involves extracting data from the old system, mapping it to the new system, and verifying its accuracy. The new vendor should provide clear guidelines on how data will be mapped, what will be migrated, and how it will be structured in the new system. Additionally, the new system should support historical reporting capabilities without requiring access to the old registry system. This ensures continuity and allows for comprehensive data analysis over time.
Effective data management is the backbone of a successful registry migration. This process requires careful planning of technical details, managing data migration, and ensuring that data mapping is accurate. The new registry vendor must work closely with your team to define requirements, develop technical specifications, and manage the data migration process with stringent quality controls in place.
Ensure your new vendor has strong data transfer and validation processes during migration from your old vendor. This includes ensuring that the new registry integrates seamlessly with the various Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and other systems used by your member base. Integration is critical to maintaining data flow and minimizing disruption to your members' workflows.
By planning the product roadmap with these considerations in mind, you can ensure a smoother transition and maintain the integrity and utility of your registry data.
Challenges in vendor transition
Transitioning to a new registry vendor can be quite complex and challenging. MSS organizations might face several key hurdles, including regulatory compliance, ethical and legal reviews, financial implications, and timing of the implementation.
- Regulatory compliance: This involves ensuring that the new registry meets all relevant data standards and regulatory requirements. This could include implementing FHIR and APIs for data exchange and adhering to the 21st Century Cures Act and USCDI standards. Keeping up with these evolving requirements is crucial to maintain the registry’s credibility and functionality.
- Ethical and legal reviews: These include examining prior vendor contracts to confirm ownership and access to historical data and reviewing business associate agreements and data use agreements to ensure data privacy and ownership.
- Financial implications: Consider the costs of contracting with both the prior and new vendors during the transition period, managing the costs associated with data migration, and ensuring financial sustainability. Budgeting for these expenses is essential to avoid financial strain on the organization. A well-planned budget will outline all transition-related costs and timeline, ensuring that leadership is aware of the temporary increase in operating expenses. In many cases, the long-term efficiencies and capabilities gained from the new system will offset these upfront costs, but securing sufficient funds and Board approval upfront for the transition period is essential. By accounting for overlapping contracts, migration services, and personnel effort, the Society can ensure it remains financially sustainable throughout the project.
- Timing and implementation: The timing of your registry transition is essential. Planning the transition to minimize disruption to registry operations is essential. This involves aligning the transition with key reporting periods and ensuring that the estimated build and development time for the registry transition, which can be 6-9 months depending on the complexity, is well-planned. Ensuring that members have continuous access to their data throughout the transition period is vital for maintaining engagement and trust. For example, if maintaining a QCDR, timing and implementation involve aligning the transition with the CMS Performance Year timeline and planning for the estimated build and development time for the registry transition. Depending on when you begin implementation, you may need to offer another mechanism for your members to access their quality data at the start of January 1 and another mechanism for submission of prior year data. Financial implications include potentially contracting two vendors to ensure a seamless transition and making sure members have visibility into their data for the entire reporting year. Engaging with CMS early on the transition plan will help ensure a smooth and successful registry migration.
Conclusion
Transitioning to a new registry vendor can be daunting, but with careful planning and the right partner, it is achievable. IQVIA can guide MSS through this complex process, helping them move from their current plateau to a registry solution that unlocks their specialty’s mission. By following the outlined steps and considerations, MSS can achieve a successful registry migration and vendor transition.
To learn more about IQVIA’s registry solutions, contact us at ppa-contact@iqvia.com