BACKGROUND: The Skin Cancer College of Australia and New Zealand (SCCANZ) has developed a unique project named SCARD - the Skin Cancer Audit and Research Database. Designed initially as a self-audit tool for primary care skin cancer practitioners, SCARD acts as a tracking tool to enhance practice safety, and it also creates practice performance reports. Pooling of de-identified data enables participating practitioners to confidentially compare their own practice to that of their peers. Additionally, this creates a large database with significant research potential, as SCARD records for every lesion de-identified practitioner and patient data, and extensive details of location, provisional and histological diagnosis, and the procedure(s) performed in its treatment. METHODS: Preliminary data collected in the database have been presented in this study. RESULTS: An initial pool of data from 177 practitioners contains 77,553 specimens from 41,006 individual patients. CONCLUSIONS: The data presented are being analyzed for further studies, and additional data continues to be collected from this ongoing project. SCARD is a useful tool at practice level, and substantial uptake by Australian primary care skin cancer practitioners has provided a unique opportunity for research into skin cancer and its management. SCCANZ, a professional college of predominantly primary care medical practitioners, with a commitment to the management of skin cancer in Australia and New Zealand, has formed a partnership with the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland to ensure that these data are managed and analyzed appropriately.
BACKGROUND: The Skin Cancer College of Australia and New Zealand (SCCANZ) has developed a unique project named SCARD - the Skin Cancer Audit and Research Database. Designed initially as a self-audit tool for primary care skin cancer practitioners, SCARD acts as a tracking tool to enhance practice safety, and it also creates practice performance reports. Pooling of de-identified data enables participating practitioners to confidentially compare their own practice to that of their peers. Additionally, this creates a large database with significant research potential, as SCARD records for every lesion de-identified practitioner and patient data, and extensive details of location, provisional and histological diagnosis, and the procedure(s) performed in its treatment. METHODS: Preliminary data collected in the database have been presented in this study. RESULTS: An initial pool of data from 177 practitioners contains 77,553 specimens from 41,006 individual patients. CONCLUSIONS: The data presented are being analyzed for further studies, and additional data continues to be collected from this ongoing project. SCARD is a useful tool at practice level, and substantial uptake by Australian primary care skin cancer practitioners has provided a unique opportunity for research into skin cancer and its management. SCCANZ, a professional college of predominantly primary care medical practitioners, with a commitment to the management of skin cancer in Australia and New Zealand, has formed a partnership with the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland to ensure that these data are managed and analyzed appropriately.
Authors: Jeremy Hay; Jeff Keir; Clara Jimenez Balcells; Nikita Rosendahl; Martelle Coetzer-Botha; Tobias Wilson; Simon Clark; Astrid Baade; Cath Becker; Luke Bookallil; Chris Clifopoulos; Tony Dicker; Martin Paul Denby; Douglas Duthie; Charles Elliott; Paul Fishburn; Mark Foley; Mark Franck; Irene Giam; Patricio Gordillo; Alister Lilleyman; Roger Macauley; James Maher; Ewen McPhee; Michael Reid; Bob Shirlaw; Graeme Siggs; Robert Spark; John Stretch; Keith van Den Heever; Thinus van Rensburg; Chris Watson; Harald Kittler; Cliff Rosendahl Journal: Australas J Dermatol Date: 2022-04-19 Impact factor: 2.481