The creation of a NAHR was initiated by Professor John Timperley, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Centre in Exeter and former President of the BHS. He identified the rise in hip preservation surgery but noted, in contrast to joint replacement surgery, a lack of outcomes data outside of small scale published series. Given his interest and expertise in joint replacement registries from around the world, setting up a registry for nonhip replacement hip surgery seemed a logical thing to do. The motion to set up such a registry was unanimously supported by the Membership of the BHS at the Annual General Meeting in Torquay in March 2011 and the membership agreed that the BHS should fund the registry. The Registry went live in March at the 2012 BHS Annual Meeting in Manchester and was formally launched at the BOA Annual Congress in September 2012. NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence as it was then known) Interventional Procedure Guidance on Arthroscopic (IPG408) and Open (IPG403) Femoroacetabular Surgery for Hip Impingement Syndrome, published in September and July 2011 respectively, noted that clinicians should submit details to this national registry.

The User Group, initially chaired by Professor John Timperley and then Mr Marcus Bankes, developed during 2012 and 2013 and consisted of Mr Tony Andrade, Professor Tim Board, Professor Max Fehily, Mr Paul Gaston, and Mr Matt Wilson, with assistance from Mr Johan Witt and Professor Damian Griffin. A major streamlining exercise was undertaken in 2013 to improve surgeon compliance following meetings of interested parties at the BHS in Bristol in March and of the original NAHR User group at the BOA Congress in October. Whilst many arthroscopic and hip preservation surgeons were enthusiastic about the development of the NAHR in principle, many already had their own databases and were unsurprisingly unwilling to duplicate data entry.

It was therefore decided that use of the data collection infrastructure which already existed for the NJR in every hospital in England and Wales was essential for success to minimise surgeon involvement in data collection and capture cases.

In addition, a Minimum Data Set (MDS Version 1.0) was defined which included a pre-operative specific and general health measures, namely the iHOT-12 (International hip outcome tool - 12 question version) and the EQ-5D-5L (five-dimensional measure of health-related quality of life, five level questionnaire developed by the EuroQol Group) respectively. Standardised paper data collection forms were redesigned to have a similar appearance to NJR forms to help with this process. Whilst it may seem outdated to develop a paper-based system, availability of convenient hardware, particularly in clinic and theatre environments, varies immensely between hospitals. Post-operative outcome data is electronic however, and patients are currently invited to complete outcome questionnaires at six, twelve and twenty-four months after their operation with an email, linking them directly to the online forms.

Growth of the Registry continued and the MDS Version 1.1 was launched in February 2015 to include data fields for the extent of pre-existing articular cartilage damage on both sides of the joint. Whilst there was little change in the way data was collected, there was increasing interest in non-joint replacement registries from other specialties from the BOA, led at that time by the then President Colin Howie. This led to the formation of an umbrella organisation for these registries called TORUS in 2016 of which the NAHR was an original member. The formation of TORUS provided a shared operating framework that allowed consistency of practice and a central support function (to deal with issues such as data governance, contracting and managing registry suppliers, and resolving day-to-day issues) to reduce the burden on individual registries and introducing efficiencies.