Cancer Surveillance Informatics

Key points

Cancer surveillance informatics focuses on identifying and evaluating how to use emerging technology to incorporate automated processes and electronic data exchange.

five people using laptop or tablet computers

Overview

Informatics is the science concerned with gathering, organizing, storing, and recording information. Informatics develops new uses for information technology to solve specific problems in areas as diverse as biology, fine arts, and economics. Informatics is also interested in how people transform technology and how technology transforms us.

Topics covered by informatics include:

  • Technology and its application.
  • Information organization and structure.
  • Human behavior and communication related to the other two domains.

Two informatics focus areas that are relevant to CDC are public health informatics and cancer surveillance informatics.

Public health informatics is "...the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practices, research, and learning."

Cancer surveillance informatics focuses on identifying and evaluating how to use emerging technology to incorporate automated processes and electronic data exchange. The concept of capturing data once and using it to meet multiple needs will become more critical as the need for information increases across the health care community. Cancer surveillance informatics projects evaluate data streams, such as insurance claims data that may meet cancer registries' requirements, alleviating the need to create special data streams for cancer registries.

CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) has a team dedicated to the efficient and effective organization and management of data, information, and knowledge generated and used by public health professionals to fulfill the core functions of public health—assessment, policy, and assurance. Learn why cancer data are collected and how they are used.