Cancer Australia to Undertake a New Project Collecting National Data

Cancer Australia has been awarded a $2.4 million grant over four years to collect, collate and report national data.
The funding has been announced by the Gillard Government and is to collect information on the state of disease when cancer is diagnosed, the treatments applied at each stage, and how frequently cancer recurs after treatment. There is currently no national cancer data in this area, leaving gaps in knowledge when it comes to clinical management and outcomes of many cancers.
Cancer Council Australia chief executive Professor Ian Olver AM said evidence was the key to effective cancer care. "Cancer survival statistics help provide the big picture. But we need data sets on stage at diagnosis, recurrence and responsiveness to treatment to guide best practice," he said.
Through this funding, Cancer Australia will also develop a framework to monitor and report on a set of indicators that will benchmark cancer control efforts in Australia, nationally and internationally.
National collection and reporting of this data will fill a significant gap in our knowledge by identifying areas that may benefit from new approaches to the delivery of best practice cancer care. It will also provide important insight into variations in survival outcomes by cancer type and of the cancer pathway after diagnosis.
This initiative will start on 1 July 2013.