Access to Scottish bowel cancer data granted!

The Edinburgh CORECT-R team have successfully applied to the Scottish Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health for bowel cancer data relating to Scottish patients. The focus of this initial application is our health economics workstream. Given rising healthcare costs, and the financial pressures on the NHS, information on the cost of cancer is keenly sought. Such evidence is, however, surprisingly scarce. Our health economics theme is studying the cost of bowel cancer care, and its efficiency, at a population level. This information is vital to planning healthcare services.

The majority of the bowel cancer data will be extracted from national datasets managed by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS). However, the approval also covers the extraction of more complex data from the Scottish electronic chemotherapy prescribing and patient scheduling system used by all three of the Scottish Cancer Networks. The data will be securely held in the NSS National Safe Haven.

We hope to publish our first findings in early 2020.

Edinburgh view image credit: The University of Edinburgh