Czech Childhood Cancer Information System: Data analysis and interactive visualisation (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The knowledge of cancer burden in the population, its time trends and the possibility of international comparison is an important starting point for cancer programmes. A reliable interactive tool describing cancer epidemiology in children and adolescents has been non-existent in the Czech Republic until recently. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to develop a new web portal entitled the Czech Childhood Cancer Information System (CCCIS), which would provide information on childhood cancer epidemiology in the Czech Republic. METHODS Data on childhood cancers have been obtained from the Czech National Cancer Registry. These data were validated using the clinical database of childhood cancer patients and subsequently combined with data from the National Register of Hospitalised Patients and with data from death certificates. These validated data were then used to determine incidence and survival rates of childhood cancer patients aged 0–19 years who were diagnosed in the period 1994–2016. Data from death certificates were used to monitor long-term mortality trends. The technical solution is based on the robust PHP development Symfony framework, with the PostgreSQL system used to accommodate the data basis. RESULTS The web portal is available for anyone at https://ccc-is.uzis.cz/index-en.php, providing basic information for experts (i.e. analyses and publications) on individual diagnostic groups of childhood cancers. It involves an interactive tool for analytical reporting, which provides information on the following basic topics in the form of graphs or tables: incidence, mortality and overall survival. Feedback was obtained and the accuracy of outputs published on the CCCIS portal was verified using the following methods: the validation of theoretical background and the user testing. CONCLUSIONS The software is capable of processing data from multiple sources, is freely available to all users and makes it possible to carry out automated analyses even for users without mathematical background: a simple selection of a topic to be analysed is required from the user.