Cancer data and the Cancer Drugs Fund

The partnership on cancer data is set up between NHS England and the systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) team at the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS).

The partnership uses NDRS data sets, including the information submitted by trusts to the SACT data set on current routine care, to inform improvements in service provision and clinical practice. Specifically, the work focuses on:

• ‘outcome’ analyses - identifying variation in practice which can be used to support review of clinical practice and address any observed health inequalities
• information to support financial and service planning
• information to support policy development and prioritisation, as part of NHS England’s specialised commissioning work for cancer
• through the partnership, the team at NHSD use SACT data to support the re-appraisal of treatments in the ‘new CDF’ (July 2016)
• this represents a world leading initiative to use real world data, collected in routine practice, to inform health technology assessments and commissioning decisions

The partnership on cancer data also supports the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) reappraisal of Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) drugs by using routinely collected data sets such as SACT to help address some of the clinical uncertainties raised by a NICE committee.

The Cancer Drugs Fund provides patients with earlier, time-limited access to promising new cancer medicines where there is uncertainty as to their clinical effectiveness.

This is just one example of real-world evidence being used to inform committee decisions, which in turn improves patient treatments.