The National Network of Congenital Anomalies: extended goals for surveillance.

National Registry of Congenital Anomalies (Registro Nacional de Anomalías Congénitas de Argentina, RENAC), a surveillance system for major congenital anomalies (CAs). The RENAC was created in 2009 in response to the growing incidence of CAs as a cause of infant morbidity and mortality. In Argentina, the relative relevance of CAs has increased over the past decades as a cause of infant mortality: in 1980, CAs accounted for 11% of deaths among infants younger than 1 year old while in 2014, they accounted for 28%. Seeking to collect information on morbidity, and following a pilot study,2 the RENAC was created and granted the role of “registry” focused on generating epidemiological information and with the purpose of establishing the rate of major CAs among newborn infants and stillbirths and monitoring epidemiological alerts.3 Every year the RENAC publishes reports on CA prevalence in Argentina, by jurisdiction and by specific CA (RENAC Report, 2015), in addition to scientific publications.1,4 T h e R E N A C i s m a d e u p o f a c e n t r a l coordination department and a maternity center network; in each maternity center, there are two healthcare providers working in newborn infant care (neonatologists, pediatricians, nurses) who report CA cases and number of births to the coordination department on a monthly basis. The system’s simplicity was prioritized; it does not collect risk factors on a routine basis but seeks to provide wide coverage and high diagnostic quality based on CA description and coding by geneticists of the coordination department. The purpose of this comment is to describe the extended goals of the RENAC surveillance system, which in 2015 was no longer a “registry” but the National Network of Congenital Anomalies. Even though from the beginning the system had a network-like design, over time we became aware of the importance of improving our communications and enlist new participants. In 2010, we introduced an online forum system, a participatory asynchronous communication technology which allows publishing customized messages, thus shortening distances. Healthcare providers from the different maternity centers The National Network of Congenital Anomalies: Extended goals for surveillance