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NSW Cancer Registry

Published 9 January 2018

The NSW Cancer Registry (NSWCR) maintains records of people with cancer in NSW. The data captured within the registry provides useful insights into the impact of cancers, and how this has changed over time. Notification of new cancer cases and cancer deaths is required under the Public Health Act 2010.

Data coverage

The NSWCR contains demographic, clinical and death details for people diagnosed or treated with cancer in NSW. It also includes these details for residents of NSW diagnosed with cancer in other Australian states and territories since 1972.

All primary malignant neoplasms, and in-situ melanoma and breast cancer are included.

Data sources

Data are received from pathology laboratories, hospitals, radiotherapy and medical oncology departments, aged care facilities and the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Electoral Roll data from the NSW Electoral Commission are provided to the Cancer Institute NSW for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy of records on people diagnosed with cancer.

Data submission

The Cancer Notification Portal enables the submission of notifications of cancer cases and clinical information to be provided to the Institute in an electronic format, by Private facilities, Aged Care Facilities and Outpatient Oncology Services.

Data availability

Incidence and mortality data:
A dataset is produced for each year, as soon as data collection and processing of all cancer cases and deaths is completed.

Incidence and mortality data are available for the following periods on request:
Most recent year: 2013
Next release: 2014 (due 1st quarter 2018)
Historical series: 1972–2013

The NSWCR is the first Australian population-based cancer registry to include data on cancer stage, treatment and quality of care. Treatment delivered in the majority of hospitals in the public sector is covered, with data from the remaining public hospitals and the private sector being included in the future. Further expansion of the NSWCR to include a broader range of data items is planned.

In order to provide high quality accurate data for research and analysis, we are rigorously testing and quality checking the new clinical data items.