Canada Builds a National Emergency Department Registry to Track Opioid

Canada is setting up a nationwide registry to track suspected opioid poisonings in emergency departments, aiming to address a lack of strong evidence for emergency addiction care. The CEDRN Opioid Registry is being built using infrastructure from the Canadian Emergency Department Research Network and is detailed in a methodology paper in Addiction Science & Clinical Practice. The initiative is registered as NCT07466784 with a registration date of 20 February 2026. Researchers plan to enroll consecutive patients of all ages presenting with suspected opioid poisoning at participating sites, using automated screening and data extraction from electronic health records. The registry will capture demographics, presentation details, urine toxicology, treatments, harm-reduction measures like take-home naloxone, and consults, plus EMS and inpatient data. By linking records to administrative databases, investigators aim to assess longer-term outcomes such as retention on opioid agonist therapy and mortality.