Cancer Registry and information technology: a new management system for integrating Cancer Registry and Oncology Departments

There is a need for fine tuned evaluation systems in oncology for a number of reasons including increasing cancer burden due to population ageing, selecting on of effective interventions to achieve the best results with limited resources, and producing of complementary evidence of the efficacy of the interventions. The cancer registry is a standard tool to monitor cancer burden in a population and is increasingly being used to perform evaluation studies. We developed an automated flexible system to overcome the actual limitations of data collection and expand the scope of cancer registries. The registration tool that we developed can effectively manage different data sources. Automatic importing of routinely available data from pathology archives, screening services, and hospital discharge records is going to reduce the time needed to produce data and also is going to allow the expansion of registered information. Direct real-time registration by clinicians is also ongoing. The new cancer registry features allow an important expansion of its scope (e.g. quick evaluation of health interventions). Even entirely new research questions may be addressed with high quality population-based data by identifying study aims and relevant variables upon discussions with health professionals.