The National Registry of Drug-Induced Ocular Side Effects was founded in 1976 and was initially funded by the Federal Food and Drug Administration. The Registry is supported by the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

The registry maintains an international clearinghouse of information on adverse ocular events associated with drugs, chemicals and herbals. The underlying principle of the Registry is to generate early signals of adverse ocular reactions. Our data, which is available to clinicians and researchers, is published in both peer-reviewed journals and every four to five years as Clinical Ocular Toxicology (formerly Drug-Induced Ocular Side Effects).

In addition to collecting spontaneous reports from clinicians, the Registry accumulates data from spontaneous reports sent to the World Health Organization's Uppsala Monitoring Center (Uppsala, Sweden), the Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, MD), pharmaceutical companies and screening of the world's medical and scientific literature.