Chronic liver disease is a significant healthcare problem and constitutes a major cause of morbidity and mortality.

The economic burden imposed by liver disease on the healthcare system is substantial, and the problem is compounded by an increasing burden of liver disease due, in part, to the increasing prevalence of NASH, HCV and HCC.  It is important to note that there are gaps in our current understanding of the epidemiology of liver disease at the population level. This is partly because of the fact that most studies are conducted at referral centers based on selected patients. Since most liver diseases have a variable latency period during which patients have mild asymptomatic disease, studies based on referral patients only shed light on the more severe or advanced disease, and fail to obtain information on the entire spectrum of the disease.

While evaluation of some liver diseases that are infrequent will continue to depend on patients seen at referral centers, however, for any meaningful progress to be made, concerted efforts across specialty centers are needed. Liver specialists can further contribute to a better understanding of the epidemiology of liver disease by striving to understand the disease pathophysiology and hence be able to classify diseases by clear-cut diagnostic criteria. Additionally, increasing the awareness of the impact and the need for intervention in these liver diseases by concerned research-funding agencies, as in other fields such as heart disease and diabetes, is a parallel necessity that must be simultaneously addressed.

While it is easy to recognize the need and benefit of obtaining population-based epidemiologic data, it is much harder to execute such projects without enhancing the ability to implement highly advanced electronic methods to capture the necessary clinical data.

SOLID electronic liver diseases' registry is designed to be a prospective project to precisely understand the pattern of HBV, HCV, HCC & NASH across the Kingdom.

SOLID registry aims to monitor, study, and report various epidemiological data of these liver diseases in order to gain a better understanding of the disease at a regional level, and identify points of divergence from other regional and international disease descriptions.

In order to maximize the benefit of this project, the registry is designed to extend longitudinally over a minimum of 10 years, during which time it is anticipated that the project will yield vital data for the overall understanding of the individual diseases.