Mountain emergency medicine is a relatively young discipline of specialization in human medicine and has established progressively in European and North American countries over the two decades. Many issues surrounding rescue and emergencies in alpine and remote terrain still need to be worked out.  As many of the incidences in alpine regions are so-called "low incidence - high relevance" situations, the development of international registries is essential and indispensable to generate robust data. Such a registry enables a systematic collection of data on strategies for the initial medical care of patients in the field and their further treatment in hospital. It is of fundamental importance for the development of standards based on scientific evidence in the field of mountain rescue and alpine emergency medicine.

Data collection for the International Alpine Trauma Registry (IATR) started in 2014. This registry is intended to record and collect data in the pre-hospital and in-hospital areas as well as on the outcome of all polytrauma patients who have suffered accidents in the alpine area throughout the year. Currently, participating centres include all South Tyrolean hospitals, the University Hospital Innsbruck, the Cantonal Hospital Chur, the Umberto Parini Hospital in Aosta, the Berufsgenossenschaftliche Unfallklinik Murnau and the Klinikum Südostbayern in Traunstein. Hospitals that are in process of being included are the Immenstadt Hospital, the Kufstein District Hospital, the Santa Maria della Misericordia University Hospital in Udine and the Santa Chiara Hospital in Trento. Up to now, 440 cases have been collected in the Alpine Trauma Registry.

In November 2017, the International Avalanche Registry (IAVAR) went online. The aim of this registry is to collect data on avalanche accidents, rescue operations, and medical characteristics and treatment of avalanche victims. Currently, all South Tyrolean hospitals as well as the Emergency and Rescue Medicine Service of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and the Umberto Parini Hospital in Aosta contribute to data collection. Other hospitals interested in this registry are the Immenstadt Hospital, the Santa Maria della Misericordia University Hospital in Udine and the Santa Chiara Hospital in Trento. Up to now, 40 patients have been included in this registry.

Since autumn 2021, our Institute of Alpine Emergency Medicine has been the superordinate centre for data entry in the International Hypothermia Registry (IHR). Here, too, all South Tyrolean hospitals participate. The purpose of this registry is to collect data on hypothermic patients with a core body temperature below 35 degrees Celsius, regardless of the cause of the hypothermia.

The IHR is run by the University of Geneva/Switzerland under the direction of Dr. Evelien Cools and Dr. Beat Walpoth.  The IAVAR and the IATR are managed by the Institute of Alpine Emergency Medicine together with the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) service unit. Access to the database is secured by a password and an encrypted connection (Secure Socket Layer, SSL). The password is changed frequently, as required by law.

In South Tyrol, the approval of the Ethics Committee was obtained for all three registries, and the Local Data Managers already designated for the Alpine Trauma Registry also enter the data for the Avalanche and Hypothermia Registries. All centres located abroad have also received approval from their respective ethics committee sand are entering data.

All three registries are accessible through the website www.mountain-registries.org