Australian Cancer Data Network

Distributed learning from clinical data
Published

May 8, 2023

We envisage a day when all patients receive evidence-based personalised therapy. Huge amounts of clinical and imaging data in hospital records are currently inaccessible for research. This data can give insights into prognosis, treatment and outcome.

The Australian Cancer Data Network (ACDN) project is establishing a nationally agreed capability to link regular treatment (clinical practice) data and clinical trial data, for machine learning analysis with international links. The data analysis is performed wherever the data resides, allowing learning across jurisdictions. This will improve data accessibility and provide governance structures to support data users including clinicians, data scientists, governments and policy makers.

It will expand the scale and accessibility of the existing Australian Computer Assisted Theranostics Network (AusCAT) by linking to the Cancer Alliance Queensland’s QLD Oncology On-Line (CAQ) platform; an early adoption of QOOL in Victoria; and the Cancer Variations (CaVa) project in NSW.