About SVOD Web Portal

Creating a web portal about tumor epidemiology in the Czech Republic is primarily motivated by the effort to make this representative and valuable data available to wide spectrum of users. We anticipate that general epidemiology data about these serious diseases and related population risks should be freely available to everybody in the Czech Republic. Another ambition of this web portal is to provide relevant information about tumor epidemiology in the Czech Republic abroad. That is why the portal is available in English.

Web portal information services can be divided into three sections: 1) Current news: regurarly updated information about population risk assessment and tumor epidemiology; 2) Interactive analyses that allow the user to investigate directly epidemiological trends of selected oncological diagnoses; 3) Predefined presentations of important topics (Authorised information service). These services are available freely to all users. In case of problems or questions it is possible to contact the webmaster of this portal - click here. Web portal is therefore a dynamic information base that will be regularly updated and that will permit users to perform wide range of analyses of their own. All analyses contain only safe and publicable data of tumor epidemiology, without any personal data of patients.

The project of creating a web portal for tumor epidemiology in the Czech Republic is tied with longstanding development of analytical software for data from National Oncological Register (NOR). Software SVOD (System for Visualizing of Oncological Data) was created in the years 1999-2003 (now in version 6). It makes accessible all NOR data via wide range of automated analyses. You can find a standalone internet presentation of SVOD system (with demos) here. Although the software was finalized successfully, there are severe limits with its distribution and availability. Distribution of database with such huge amount of data to local installation is relatively complicated. Moreover, the authors do not want to SELL a software with official data of the Czech Republic so that common business model of distribution is not possible. Presented web portal solves all these problems and provides an effective way of access to epidemiological analyses to unlimited number of users. Another advantage against common software is centralized communication and analyses management - the portal contains also a Current News service.

The web portal works mainly with data from National Oncologic Register (NOR) which is managed by Institute of Health Information and Statistics (UZIS CR). It offers validated epidemiological data from the years 1977 - 2002. This represents a unique representative data set at least in European region (currently there is 1229401 records). UZIS CR is therefore cited as a data manager in all outputs and is stated among scientific guarantees of the project. Epidemiological trends cannot be made without relevant demographic data about examined population. This data was acquired from the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) on the basis of general agreement about cooperation with Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno and Masaryk University in Brno.

The web portal was created by a team of authors from Faculty of Medicine in Brno (Centre of Biostatistics and Analyses) and Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno. Creation of the portal is vitally supported by Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic in context of National healthcare quality programme. Further development is supported by a research programme of Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (Functional diagnostics of tumors, MZO 00209805) and a research programme of Faculty of Science MU (INCHEMBIOL - RECETOX project, 0021622412). These grant projects guarantee long-term viability of the portal and ensure regular updates of data and successive development under supervision of administrators.

Information services of the web portal will be further developed, among others on the basis of user suggestions and requirements. The main goal is to extend the information service in the area of population risk analyses in relation with available environmental data and another external risk factors (cooperation with above mentioned INCHEMBIOL project). Current version of the portal offers only epidemiological data, but NOR database allows even analysis of diagnostics and treatment of oncologic patients and survival analyses - even in relation to current hospital. These analyses are prepared for communication in the Oncological Society and are ready in the restricted zone of the portal. The web portal will therefore serve as an information source for Czech health management and can help to set up reference standards for healthcare results in oncology.

Institutions and subjects participating on the web portal development

	Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses at the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Science of the Masaryk University in Brno http://www.iba.muni.cz
	Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute http://www.mou.cz
	University Oncology Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University in Brno http://www.uoc.muni.cz
	Institute of Health Information and Statistics, Ministry of Health CR http://www.uzis.cz
	National Institute of Public Health http://www.szu.cz/
	Czech Statistical Office http://www.czso.cz

Authors