Merseyside & Cheshire Cancer Registry (MCCR) and Thames Cancer Registry (TCR) will provide more meaningful intelligence to the National Health Service (NHS), the Department of Health (DoH), academics and others by monitoring trends in cancer incidence, prevalence and survival more effectively.
Implementing InterSystems` Ensemble universal integration platform will enable the two registries to apply automated business rules to the capture of data relating to cancer.
Ensemble allows the registries to build upon their existing investment in automation while facilitating the integration of new rule sets and technologies, helping to ensure information is gathered quickly, accurately and securely.
This will ultimately improve the ability of the registries to provide information and intelligence for cancer control, including: the evaluation of cancer prevention and screening programmes; assuring the quality and outcomes of cancer care; and assessing the impact of environmental and social factors on cancer risk.
Once analysed, the data will enable the government to make cost-effective and evidence-based decisions about current and future investment in cancer services.
In addition to the primary requirements to improve data quality, the decision to implement InterSystems Ensemble has also been driven by the need to integrate more effectively with the new systems being delivered by the NHS National Programme for IT (Connecting for Health).
With Ensemble in place, the registries can manage larger volumes of electronic data, facilitating the move from a position of largely manual data collection and re-entry. One of the key benefits of Ensemble is the automatic sorting, cleaning and collating of data from multiple sources and formats - be it e-mail, HL7, XML or CSV files.
Steve Richards, Head of Computing Services, Thames Cancer Registry, said: "Currently TCR receives data from over 100 healthcare organisations providing cancer care and/or cancer information, and the Connecting for Health programme offers both new opportunities and new challenges for an organisation like ours. In this complex environment we are looking to Ensemble to assist us with our requirement to integrate with the national programme while maintaining our links and support for existing systems."
Guy Hayton, Head of Information Technology, Merseyside & Cheshire Cancer Registry, said: "InterSystems` Ensemble will ultimately benefit all aspects of cancer control by enabling the faster generation of reports and statistics using more contemporary data. As an added benefit, registry staff, government staff and researchers will not have to read complex computer code to understand the business rules of registration. Ensemble enables us to create flowcharts and diagrams that can be readily understood by people from a non-IT background."
Hayton continued: "Following the success of the two pilot schemes in Merseyside & Cheshire and Thames, the potential exists for a major roll-out across other UK regional registries to provide even greater consistency and accuracy in the provision of information and intelligence for cancer research and prevention."
"Few people realise that statistics and information on cancer incidence in England originate from the regional cancer registries, and that these organisations have the onerous task of tracking individuals from the point at which they are first diagnosed with the disease," said Chris Carrigan, National Co-ordinator for England, at the National Cancer Action Team.
"This underlines the absolutely critical role the registries play. They are being increasingly focused in wider and more varied roles around cancer data and information, recognised by the wider dataset, which has recently been approved by the NHS Information Standards Board. Responding to these challenges will require registries to process a more expansive dataset, from increasing numbers of electronic sources, within much tighter timescales. It is therefore fantastic news that Merseyside & Cheshire and Thames have taken the initiative in implementing an IT tool that will enable them to collect and analyse data more effectively and consistently, as well as ensuring that regional comparisons have statistical validity. Better information is key to the assessment and quality of cancer care and delivery."
Phil Birchall, Healthcare Business Development Director at InterSystems, commented: "The adoption of Ensemble by Merseyside & Cheshire and Thames Registries is a great example of how this innovative new technology can protect our customers` investments in existing systems while enabling new solutions that can dramatically improve the business process."
Birchall continued: "We are delighted to be working on such a socially important project that showcases how technically advanced registries are, and hope to work on similar implementations with other registries in the near future."
InterSystems Ensemble universal integration platform won the prestigious Product of the Year Award at the 2004 Information Management Awards. It stands out as the only application integration platform to incorporate the functionality of integration and application servers, a high performance database, and a unified development and management environment in a single, architecturally seamless product. Ensemble`s unique architecture enables it to address even the most complex integration projects far more rapidly and cost-effectively than is typical with other integration technologies.
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