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Northern Ireland Cancer Registry

The N. Ireland Cancer Registry (NICR), with oversight from Queen’s University Belfast and funding from the Public Health Agency, is responsible for producing official cancer statistics for Northern Ireland.

The NICR collates and analyses information on cancer and the services patients receive and, based on this, is able to report cancer incidence, mortality, prevalence, survival and staging. One of its key outputs is evidence to help inform decision making around cancer services.

Macmillan-N. Ireland Cancer Registry partnership

Macmillan is working with the NICR to use data to improve the understanding of the impact and costs of cancer and its treatment. This is across the whole of the cancer journey, including the wider community and health and social care services in Northern Ireland.

The partnership and its objectives align closely with Macmillan’s established work with the National Cancer Registry Analytical Service (NCRAS) but objectives specific to Northern Ireland will include:

  • Profiling Transforming Cancer Follow Up patients assigned to Self-Directed Aftercare by linking them to NICR datasets to determine how well they represent the whole cancer patient population
  • Collecting information to report on breast cancer recurrences and to work towards a method for routinely collecting and reporting recurrence data electronically
  • Profiling patients seen by Northern Ireland’s regional Acute Oncology (AO) service to identify common characteristics of AO patients and to better understand their cancer pathway before and after their experience with AO.

Download the April 2018 Macmillan and Northern Ireland Cancer Registry Analytical Partnership briefing [PDF].

Get in touch

For more information about the Macmillan-NICR work plan or if you would like to share your insights, please email Dr Colm Burns – Macmillan Evidence Officer, Northern Ireland.

Email Dr Colm Burns

Northern Ireland GP Federation Cancer Profiles

In early 2018, the NICR completed work to profile and compare the cancer populations in each of Northern Ireland’s GP Federations. Based on this analysis, the NICR produced a detailed factsheet on each GP Federation, including data on incidence, prevalence, age and stage at diagnosis.

Macmillan also produced a series of one-page cancer profiles highlighting, for each GP Federation, the key features of its cancer population.

GP Federation factsheets

GP Federation cancer profiles

NICR’s GP Federations central report 2011-2015 [PDF] brings together all of the factsheets and also presents detailed analysis across the GP Federations. It identifies how cancer incidence and prevalence in each GP Federation differs from Northern Ireland trends, broken down by age group, gender, cancer type, time since diagnosis, stage at diagnosis, deprivation quintile, etc.

Cancer Data Landscape in Northern Ireland 2018

The NICR has also produced a report on the cancer data landscape in Northern Ireland [PDF] in 2018. The report summarises the NICR’s current way of working, the data it holds and has access to as well as other external datasets to which NICR data could potentially be linked for public benefit.

Local Cancer Intelligence Northern Ireland

The NICR provides much of the data for the Macmillan Local Cancer Intelligence tool for Northern Ireland, a website with interactive, visual representations of key cancer indicators and statistics for Northern Ireland.