1 National Cancer Control Programme, Ministry of Health, Nutrition & Indigenous Medicine, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Purpose
Sri Lanka Cancer Registry (SLCR) plays a pivotal role in cancer control. The value of a cancer registry depends on the quality of its data. The CanReg software package developed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has immense influence on SLCR in producing quality cancer registry data.
Methods
The IARC experts had conducted 03 external reviews in 2005, 2008, and 2012 on SLCR and made important recommendations including introduction of CanReg software for cancer registration activities. Statistics show that the cancer incidence in Sri Lanka is on the rise. Cancer registry data sources are also increasing. Therefore reliable software for data entry, quality control, and consistency checks were deemed necessary. As a consequence CanReg4 was introduced to SLCR in 2008.
Results
Data entry had begun with the year 2006 data and included 14,320 records after consistency checking for duplicate records, multiple primaries and impossible or rare cases by using CanReg software. The migration from CanReg4 to CanReg5 was accomplished in 2010. The Patient, Treatment, Questionnaire and Sources sections of the data entry form of the application had to be customized to suit the SLCR needs before migration. It is hassle-free open source software with intuitive interface and multi user capabilities. The NCCP was able to increase its data sources for cancer registry from 06 in 2007 to 162 in 2015. The NCCP manipulates more than 106,858 records at present with this tool and was able to publish quality cancer incidence data for 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Conclusions
Cancer control planning without high quality cancer registry data from the cancer registry leads to misplaced emphasis and wasting of investment. The IARC has contributed immensely to yield quality cancer registry data by introducing CanReg software and strengthening of cancer registration informatics in Sri Lanka.