Registry data is used to help plan cancer services, support direct care, investigate potential causes of cancer and check how well the NHS is doing and how it could improve.
The information in the cancer registry can tell us at a national level how many people are diagnosed with cancer, what treatments they have, how long they live, and whether this is getting better or worse. This information can then be used by the NHS to help improve treatment and care for people with cancer:
- To plan NHS cancer services
For example, the NHS decided how many proton beam machines they needed to build in England based on the number of people in the cancer registry they thought might need this treatment.
- To investigate potential causes of cancer
For example, Public Health England can use the cancer registry to check whether living near a mobile phone mast or power cable affects how likely someone is to develop cancer. This knowledge can be used to protect people from identified causes of cancer.
For example, the cancer registry can be useful for checking whether someone being investigated or treated for cancer has a family history of the disease. This may affect their treatment. Another example is when new information emerges about the long-term effects of treatment that someone has had in the past. The cancer registry keeps a record of this and allows them to be contacted so they can receive the care and support they need.
- To check how well the NHS is doing and how it could improve
By identifying trends in the number of people diagnosed with cancer, how long they live and how successful their treatment and care is, the cancer registry can be used to monitor how well the NHS is doing and identify what it could do to improve. This may result in the NHS and government changing what services are provided or how things are done.
The cancer registry aims to include information on everyone with cancer. This is because for some uses of registry having complete data is important. For example, trying to understand rarer cancers is already difficult because they only affect a small number of people. If the data was less complete this would be even harder. There is a similar problem when trying to investigate potential clusters of cancer in a small area e.g. around a power plant. Doing this well depends on knowing about as many cases in that area as possible.
Close