Our purpose is to present the potential for health technology assessment that arthroplasty registers may offer.

A revision of the health assessment uses and information collected by arthroplasty registers was made. The information provided from international networks like NORE, ISAR and ICOR was also considered. Arthroplasty registers collect data of patients undergoing joint replacement surgery (mainly hip and knee) along with implant information. They provide longitudinal information useful to assess implant survival (expressed as revision rate and calculated from the primary surgery to implant revision). They also data from the surgical procedure and, more recently, a number of registries incorporate patient reported outcomes (PROMs) information.

Arthroplasty registers provide information from multiple perspectives:

1. (i) Decision-makers and healthcare providers/authorities: the comparison of revision rates by using funnel plots is a useful methodology to benchmark implants and to identify outliers, or models with significantly different revision rate in comparison to their peers. Besides, data available in registers has proven to be useful to define sets of indicators related to safety, effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centered healthcare and perceived health outcomes.

2. (ii) Surgeons: Some ongoing initiatives, like ODEP, aiming at providing a benchmark rating for implant survivorship, are gaining interest by professionals promoting an evidence-based clinical practice.

3. (iii) Industry: the large amount of data recorded so far may allow obtaining robust information of prosthesis behavior.

4. (iv) Patients: there is an increasing number of registers that incorporate PROMs. Moreover, a growing interest to promote patient engagement in arthroplasty decision making has been observed.

Long-standing arthroplasty registries have untapped potential. Beyond the assessment of implant survival, they have been consolidated as a useful tool for decision-makers, professionals, and patients. Next steps will be to promote joint analysis of national/regional registries to explore uncommon practices or new medical devices, and also to adapt to future regulations on implant traceability.