Data Standards and Guidance

Nationally agreed and Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO) endorsed data standards help facilitate the timely sharing of cancer data and information for decision making, improvement and research.

Te Aho o Te Kahu is fully committed to working in partnership with the sector to enable the collection of complete and accurate cancer data, join currently disparate data siloes, and to provide a means to share timely clinical cancer information throughout the health care system to support clinical care and patient/whānau needs.

Te Aho o Te Kahu is working with a range of clinical specialities to transition to an interoperable digital health environment through the development and subsequent national adoption of data standards over the coming years.

Health Information Standard Organisation (HISO) published standards set requirements for the safe, secure and purposeful use and sharing of health information. Standards ensure the integrity of health information and that systems are interoperable. They are part of an ecosystem in which patients and consumers and their family/whānau have access to and control over their own information.

Te Whatu Ora has developed an Interoperability Roadmap to support a modern, digitally enabled and data-driven health and disability system to improve equity and pae ora (healthy futures). An interoperable digital health ecosystem relies on the national adoption of data standards and collaboration across the health sector. Implementation of cancer standards in a production system would only be practical if much of the data is automatically populated via patient and clinical systems. This would minimise the administrative burden on clinicians and others involved in data entry. It is not expected that all the data elements included can be collected immediately and/or are clinically required. This includes balancing structured data capture and free text for more nuanced narrative reporting.

We are currently working with the sector to support:

  • medical oncology and haematology as part of the ACT-NOW programme of work
  • structured pathology
  • multidisciplinary meetings (MDM)
  • radiation oncology.

For more information please visit our dedicated data standards website.

For Ministry of Health cancer data standards that have been retired, please visit our retired data standards page.