Cancer: introduction

Public Health Scotland (PHS) informs cancer control through the collection and analysis of data together with topic expertise on its interpretation and the wider evidence base. PHS works with a variety of stakeholders – including the NHS, Scottish Government, third sector organisations and, importantly, the general public – to help inform improvements in cancer prevention, treatment and experience.

PHS provides a wide range of statistical analyses based on data from the Scottish Cancer Registry, National Records of Scotland, Quality Performance Indicators, Systemic Anti-Cancer Treatment, Radiotherapy and Cancer Waiting Times. More information about the history and data collected by the Scottish Cancer Registry is available from the Cancer registration pages on the PHS website. In addition to Official Accredited Statistics outputs, other less regular reports are produced periodically and are available from the Publications area of the PHS website.

The Scottish Cancer Registry has been managed by PHS (and one of its predecessor organisations, ISD Scotland) since 1997 and has been collecting information on cancer since 1958. The data are used for a wide variety of purposes which include: public health surveillance; health needs assessment, planning and commissioning cancer services; evaluation of the impact of interventions on incidence and survival; clinical audit and health services research; epidemiological studies; and providing information to support genetic counselling and health promotion. There are three cancer screening programmes in Scotland - bowel, breast and cervical - and analytical support for the evaluation and monitoring of these programmes is provided by PHS.