The NHS Cancer Registry, which monitors the treatment
history of cancer patients, has started testing a data integration
system to improve the quality of records.
Two of the country’s eight regional cancer registries have
started the trial, which uses tools from US-based InterSystems.
The Merseyside & Cheshire Cancer Registry and the Thames
Cancer Registry will integrate, validate and manage information
from hundreds of data sources for a rules-based system called
Entente.
The NHS Cancer Registry plans to use Entente to assess outcomes
of cancer treatments, study environmental and social factors when
it comes to cancer risks, and evaluate cancer prevention and
screening programmes.
Merseyside & Cheshire Cancer Registry and the Thames Cancer
Registry are trialling InterSystems’ Ensemble tools. Ensemble
includes an integration server, an application server, an object
database and a unified development and management environment,
which are all combined in a single packaged solution for
integrating data.
The system will be used to take data feeds from multiple sources
and link them automatically to the regional registries and the NHS
centralised registry.
Currently, much of this work is done manually, meaning the
quality of such work can be affected.
At the moment, it can take up to 18 months from the time a
patient first starts cancer treatment for the data to reach the
national database.