In 2011, the NTRI established the Australian Trauma Quality Improvement Program (AusTQIP) including the Australian Trauma Registry (ATR) bringing together Australia’s designated trauma centres to form a collaboration to provide important data on the most severely injured. The program, initially formed to develop a national program to further improve the quality and safety of trauma care provided at trauma centres in Australia, expanded in 2018 to include New Zealand, becoming the first bi-national trauma registry. New Zealand joined the registry under a Memorandum of Understanding. The AusTQIP was formed with an overarching Steering Committee comprised of representation from all states and territories, and other participating stakeholders . Reporting to the Steering Committee was the AusTQIP Management Committee.

Once the ANZTR was established as a leading clinical quality registry under this structure it became evident that the registry had moved to a new stage, from one of development to one of promotion and utilisation of the high quality data it housed. The ANZTR needed to look not just at the day-to-day running of the registry but to new opportunities, such as the ANZTR Portal for contributing sites to make comparisons, data linkage with other datasets for improved data quality and history, the recruitment of additional sites to increase major trauma data capture, and additional new projects.

It was also identified that the AusTQIP needed to look at other quality improvement projects. The decision was made in 2021 to redesign the governance structure of the AusTQIP and ANZTR. The ANZTR Board was established to manage the registry, including the day-to-day activities and projects.