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Data tools and platforms

Discover what National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) data tools and platforms are available.

Introduction

A core part of the NDRS remit is to produce a variety of reports and publications using patient data, including national statistics, peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, data reports, data tables, and disease information tools.

Currently there are 3 data platforms available to NDRS stakeholders:

  • CancerStats1
  • CancerStats2
  • CancerData

The CancerStats1 and CancerStats2 platforms require a Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) connection and registration, whereas CancerData publicly available open access tool.


CancerStats1 (legacy site)

This is the original information and reporting portal for the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS). Most functionality has now been migrated to the new and updated CancerStats2 portal (details above). However, until the migration is fully complete, the following functionality is still available on the original CancerStats1 site (opens in a new window):

  • incidence / mortality / survival
  • treatment modality
  • Clinical Headline Indicators
  • Standard Output Tables for rarer cancer types (Get Data Out)

The platform requires an N3 / HSCN secure network connection and users will need to sign up to an agreement restricting what can be done with this data due to the sensitive nature of it. If people need help setting up their connection / logging in they should contact the CancerStats help desk via [email protected]

Enquiries about cancer incidence and mortality data in CancerStats1 or CancerData should go to the lead Sally Vernon via [email protected] 


CancerStats2

The primary purpose of the CancerStats2 platform (opens in a new window) is to provide operational feedback to key stakeholders of NCRAS such as medical professionals, hospital cancer teams and commissioners to drive the quality and completeness of cancer data and improve outcomes for cancer patients.

CancerStats2 is a secure platform, powered by a statistical software solution (SAS). It enables key stakeholders of NCRAS to generate reports using NCRAS data on a self-service basis. The platform was originally created to provide rapid operational feedback to NHS Trusts, following their monthly data submissions to NCRAS.

 include:

  • Cancer Outcomes and Services data set (COSD) reports
  • Radiotherapy Data Set (RTDS) reports 
  • Systemic Anti Cancer Therapy (SACT) reports 
  • Rapid Cancer Registration Data set (RCRD) dashboard
  • NHSE staging dashboard
  • clinical audit programmes
  • NHS partnership projects
  • training and guidance documentation
  • genomic somatic data reporting

The platform requires an N3 / HSCN secure network connection and users will need to sign up to an agreement restricting what can be done with this data due to the sensitive nature of it. If people need help setting up their connection / logging in or have any questions about data reported on the CancerStats2platform, please contact the team at [email protected] 

Click on the box below to view the presentation overview on the content, reports and dashboards available via the CancerStats2 platform:


CancerData

The CancerData platform is a free and publicly available website where you can access data tools relating to:

  • incidence, mortality
  • Routes to Diagnosis, treatment
  • COVID-19 dashboards
  • stage
  • secondary care diagnostics statistics by local geography and tumour type, with additional filters for year, age and sex
  • Get Data Out programme
  • CAS explorer
  • Simulacrum

The Get Data Out (GDO) Programme 

The GDO programme, has produced key cancer statistics for small groups of patients; these outputs are meant for use by patients, the public and any general user, and anonymisation standards are designed into these outputs by aggregation at the outset.

The CAS Explorer

The CAS explorer shows the completeness of the cancer registration data registered by the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) and is designed to be used by researchers and analysts to gain a better understanding of the data quality and completeness of the fields in the three main tables before submitting requests to access NCRAS data. For a more granular exploration of the data, the Simulacrum can be used to see what sort of analyses are feasible.

The Simulacrum

The Simulacrum has been created to help researchers and others who want to ask questions using cancer data to do so on a data set that looks and feels a lot like the real thing, but never compromises patient confidentiality. This dataset is a synthetic version of the CAS core Patient and Tumour tables combined with the SACT dataset. This can be downloaded freely for data exploration (though enquirers should send their queries to NCRAS to be run on the real CAS-based data for official results) and used for any purpose.

If an enquirer submits SQL code developed on the Simulacrum data to the NCRAS enquiries inbox, please check the NCRAS guide to Simulacrum data enquiries to help determine whether to undertake the request. If so, prepare the data. A colleague / your line manager should check what you have done and check that it is ok to release. The simulacrum team can help advise on this process if it is new to you. You can access the NCRAS guide to Simulacrum data enquiries on the CancerData platform. 


Other public health tools and cancer specific tools

Public Health Profiles / the Fingertips tool is a publicly available tool and publishes a number of cancer specific metrics by local area including cancer waiting times, and uptake and coverage metrics for breast screening, cervical screening and bowel cancer screening. You can find them under the Cancer Services Profiles, GP Practice Profiles, and Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) Profiles.

The Local Health tool (requires flash player) presents data at ‘small area’ level with indicators available for incidence of all cancers, breast, colorectal, lung and prostate cancer. This is the only public source of ward and MSOA level data. The ‘Find my area’ tab at the top of the webpage will open a section which allows searching for data at ‘small area’ level (including by wards). Please see the ‘FAQ’ tab at the top of the webpage for more detailed instructions on the interface and functionality.

Cancer Research UK collate incidence, mortality, survival and prevention UK level statistics, and local cancer specific profiles.

Macmillan collate a range of statistics including incidence, mortality, prevalence and survival at a national and local level, as well as evaluation reports. 


Future developments

As part of the wider NDRS digital transformation project we aim to consolidate all NDRS legacy content onto a single website and point of access, and this includes the data reporting platforms and data tools.

We are currently working on proof of concepts reports looking at how we can embed CancerData R shiny dashboards into the pages of our new website. As a second phase we will then consider the restricted access / HSCN granular content from the CancerStats platforms. 

Any ideas and / or feedback are welcome and can be sent to the NDRS Business Intelligence team via [email protected] 

Last edited: 25 March 2024 3:46 pm