Trauma remains a leading cause of death and disability and accounts for a substantial portion of health care expenditures.1 Therefore, research to improve trauma care is a leading public health priority.
Spearheading this effort, the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma coordinated a landmark multi-institutional endeavor, the Major Trauma Outcomes Study.2 On its completion in 1989, the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma recognized the importance of national trauma data aggregation to inform quality improvement. In 1997, it formed a subcommittee to develop the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB), a standardized collection of national trauma data (Box). Today, to our knowledge, the NTDB is the world鈥檚 largest trauma data repository, with more than 7.5 million electronic records from more than 900 trauma centers.