Trauma registries serve the following purpose (but are not limited to):
• Quantifying injury through the collation of data on injured patients
• Informing injury prevention
• Monitoring the changing patterns of injury
• Monitoring the management of injury in the health care system
• Facilitating the comparison of the management of injury across institutions
• Providing a source of data to determine the financial costs of injury
• Facilitating improvements in the management of injured patients through the availability of detailed data on injured patients from their pre-hospital phase of management through to their outcome at hospital discharge

A bi-national registry in Australia and New Zealand is necessary for the following reasons:
• To provide the existing trauma registries in Australia and New Zealand and their associated trauma systems with benchmarks of injury management against which to assess their own performance and implement strategies to improve care
• To quantify the extent of injury in Australia and New Zealand
• To monitor the changing patterns of injury in Australia and New Zealand
• To help determine the financial costs of injury in Australia and New Zealand
• To make available a large, comprehensive data set of injury for research and comparison with international injury data sets
• To build and strengthen relationships in the common pursuit of improving the management of injury