Website of the Department of Health

1. Introduction

Aims

1.1 The NHS Cancer Information Strategy aims to:

Ensure that accurate, comprehensive and comprehensible information about cancer is accessible to all those who need it.

Enhance the quality of care given to patients with actual or suspected cancer, by ensuring that their needs for information are met in a timely, sensitive and appropriate way and by ensuring good communication between healthcare sectors.

Underpin the Government's commitment to modernise cancer care in this country and to monitor progress towards the achievement of specific targets to reduce the death rate from cancer.

Context

1.2 The Cancer Information Strategy builds on and connects to existing policy initiatives, in particular:

The White Paper The New NHS, Modern, Dependable (1997) which outlined the government's ten year strategy to modernise the NHS.

The Calman/Hine Report A Framework for Commissioning Cancer Services (1995) which introduced the concept of Cancer Units and Cancer Centres, emphasised the importance of monitoring and audit of the quality of service provision

Improving Outcomes cancer guidance, which sets out evidence-based guidance for individual cancers and tumour groups, to complement the Calman/Hine Report. Guidance on breast, colorectal, lung and gynaecological cancers have already been published, guidance on upper gastro-intestinal, urological, haematological and head and neck cancers is to follow.

The NHS Information Strategy Information for Health (1998) which set out a programme for meeting the information needs of the whole NHS. This Cancer Information Strategy is intended to be one strand within the overall development of Information for Health.

Approaches to cancer information

1.3 The range of information related to cancer is vast, and for the purposes of the Cancer Information Strategy the various elements and issues can be considered from two different points of view:

a) According to the different users of the information, as set out in section 2. These are:

b) According to the different types or subjects of the information, as set out in section 3 and below and used to structure sections 4 and 5:

1.4 In this strategy, the needs of different users of cancer information have been considered. Deficiencies in the current availability and accessibility of different types of cancer information have been outlined and ways of improving the quality, consistency and accessibility of the various types of cancer information are suggested.

Recommendations

1.5 Recommendations are made regarding early actions that should be taken to improve all aspects of cancer information. A detailed source document to this strategy, 'Towards a Cancer Information Strategy' can be found at http://www.nhsia.nhs.uk/cancer/

Further details of the objectives of the strategy, policy context, background and scope can be found in Chapter 1 of the detailed source document to this strategy 'Towards a Cancer Information Strategy' prepared by the NHS Information Authority.

• Cancer information strategy
• Cancer waiting times information - for NHSNet users (opens new window)