Cancer information now faster and more accurate

An enhanced New Zealand Cancer Registry is now operating following a complete redevelopment by the Ministry of Health and Solnet Solutions Limited.

The Cancer Registry was recognised as a “central core of cancer control activities” in the Ministry of Health’s New Zealand Cancer Control Strategy 2003. A key requirement for the redevelopment project was to support the Ministry’s drive to improve the quality of information used for research and planning related to cancer control.

The redeveloped Cancer Registry ensures greater data quality and integrity through enhanced validation and audit capabilities. Along with a number of new functions, the redesign has provided significant efficiency gains. The new user interface allows the Cancer Registry Team at the Ministry to quickly and more accurately align information from lab reports with existing records and other national collections, such as the National Health Index. “The new system has streamlined the collection and coding of cancer information,” says Susan Hanna, Cancer Registry Team Leader, “It dramatically reduces the manual handling of data and allows electronic storage and retrieval of pathology reports, and more efficient quality assurance processes”.

Technically the redeveloped Registry had to fit the Ministry’s existing IBM environment and integrate with a number of associated systems. The component and service-oriented architecture, which includes a rules engine for management of the cancer codes and validation rules, provides for future extensions and re-purposing for similar health data collections for the Ministry.

Solnet Solutions Managing Director, Mark Botherway, said both organisations collaborated closely, ensuring the end solution met the users’ requirements, timeline and budget. “I believe that we were successful in delivering this project because the Ministry had an in-depth understanding of their requirements, and we worked as a team to deliver a comprehensive solution that has been very well received by the users. This project exemplifies a successful partnership with the Ministry resulting in significant enhancements to a key health information system.”

The Cancer Registry is a national data collection recording all cancer events since 1948. It is the second oldest population-based cancer registry in the world. The Cancer Registry Act 1993 requires pathology laboratories to report all newly diagnosed cancers to the Ministry of Health.