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Review
. 2020 Jul 1;27(9):1488-1495.
doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocaa149.

Using informatics to improve cancer surveillance

Wendy Blumenthal  1 , Temitope O Alimi  1 , Sandra F Jones  1 , David E Jones  1 , Joseph D Rogers  1 , Vicki B Benard  1 , Lisa C Richardson  1
Affiliations
Review

Using informatics to improve cancer surveillance

Wendy Blumenthal et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. .

Abstract

Objectives: This review summarizes past and current informatics activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Program of Cancer Registries to inform readers about efforts to improve, standardize, and automate reporting to public health cancer registries.

Target audience: The target audience includes cancer registry experts, informaticians, public health professionals, database specialists, computer scientists, programmers, and system developers who are interested in methods to improve public health surveillance through informatics approaches.

Scope: This review provides background on central cancer registries and describes the efforts to standardize and automate reporting to these registries. Specific topics include standardized data exchange activities for physician and pathology reporting, software tools for cancer reporting, development of a natural language processing tool for processing unstructured clinical text, and future directions of cancer surveillance informatics.

Keywords: cancer surveillance; electronic health records; interoperability; laboratory information systems; natural language processing; public health.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Potential data sources for cancer surveillance. Pathology laboratories—freestanding and hospital—send data to both hospital registries and central cancer registries.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Implementation of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) transaction and content profiles to support interoperable data exchange. 1Structured data capture; 2Anatomic Pathology Reporting to Public Health; 3Cross-enterprise Document Reliable Interchange; 4Retrieve Form for Data-Capture.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
States receiving data from laboratories through electronic pathology reporting. PHINMS: Public Health Information Network Messaging System.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. National Program of Cancer Registries: Informatics. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/npcr/informatics/ Accessed November 1, 2019.
    1. National Program of Cancer Registries: About the Program. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/npcr/about.htm Accessed May 1, 2020.
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