The NHS Long Term Plan sets out ambitious targets for cancer care, intended to drive an improvement in cancer survival rates and increase early diagnosis. Across England there are 21 Cancer Alliances, which bring together clinical and clerical leaders from hospital trusts and other health and social care organisations, to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and care on offer to cancer patients in their local area.

It is widely recognised that screening services are key to diagnosing patients with cancer earlier. East and West Midlands Cancer Alliances identified that cancer outcomes in the Midlands were below other areas of the UK and so commissioned the HEU to develop the Midlands Cancer Screening Dashboard.

The overall aim of the dashboard is to provide decision makers with easier access to the intelligence they need to understand different aspects of cancer screening and guide and inform changes and improvements to cancer screening programs and interventions. It brings together multiple data feeds that, while openly available, were previously scattered across several different locations and sources. This includes data on cancer related metrics (patient level hospital activity data and national screening coverage rates, cancer staging and mortality data) and evidence-based interventions to improve screening uptake and cancer outcomes.

Our approach

We delivered an interactive dashboard bringing together multiple data sources into one place to highlight variation in the outcomes associated with cervical, colorectal, breast and lung cancer in the Midlands with the hope of improving screening uptake in the area.

• Sourcing and Information Governance
• Structuring data
• Designing visualisations and stakeholder engagement
• Refining, making data understandable
• Dashboard launch