A survey within 8 European countries belonging to ECRIN (European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network) was performed to assess the status of national developments with respect to registries for observational clinical studies. Additionally, this survey was targeted at the needs and requirements for data sharing of individual participant data (IPD) from clinical trials/clinical studies. 6 out of the 8 countries included in the survey, reported about national activities with respect to registries for observational or health studies. From the survey it was concluded that a first step could be to integrate the national registries with the crMDR (clinical research Meta Data Repository) from ECRIN, covering all primary registers from WHO ICTRP (International Clinical Trials Registry Platform) plus ClinicalTrials.gov, Pubmed and some repositories for sharing of IPD (e.g. BioLINCC - Biological Specimen and Repository Information Coordinating Center, YODA - Yale University Open Data Access) (https://newmdr.ecrin.org/).