History

Web portal

The Portal of Cancer Epidemiology in the Czech Republic is a continuation of the many years of development of analytical software for the Czech National Cancer Registry (CNCR) data. In 1999–2003, the SVOD® (System for Visualisation of Oncology Data) analytical and presentation software was created, making all CNCR data available in automated analyses. This software was followed in 2005 by the web portal www.svod.cz, which solved the main problems associated with the distribution, operation and updating of the standalone SVOD® software and made all relevant epidemiological analyses available to an unlimited number of users very efficiently.

Epidemiological analyses are the main part of the web portal. These predefined analytical tools make epidemiological data available to the user in different views. The form and content of the outputs of individual analyses can be chosen by each user according to his/her needs (selection of diagnosis, target group of patients according to available parameters, display in graphs, tables, maps... etc.).

The original web portal was created by a team of authors from the Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses at the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University and the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute. The creation of the portal was substantially supported by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic under the National Healthcare Quality Programme – Healthcare Quality Support Projects. The development was further supported by a research proposal of the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (Functional Diagnosis of Tumours, MZO 00209805) and a research proposal of the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University (INCHEMBIOL – RECETOX project, 0021622412).

The following institutions participated in the creation and development of the web portal of cancer epidemiology in the Czech Republic:

Team of authors (historical version):

  • Assoc. Prof. Ladislav Dušek, PhD
  • Jan Mužík, PhD
  • Miroslav Kubásek, PhD
  • Jana Koptíková, PhD
  • Prof. Jan Žaloudík, MD, PhD
  • Prof. Rostislav Vyzula, MD, PhD

Citation (historical version): DUŠEK Ladislav, MUŽÍK Jan, KUBÁSEK Miroslav, KOPTÍKOVÁ Jana, ŽALOUDÍK Jan, VYZULA Rostislav. Cancer Epidemiology in the Czech Republic [online]. Masaryk University, Czech Republic, [2005], [cit. YYYY-MM-DD]. Available from: http://old.svod.cz. Version 7.0 [2007], ISSN 1802 – 8861.

Note: The current version's citation is available in the footer of this website.

Software SVOD

The SVOD software (Software for Visualisation of Oncology Data) has been developed since 1999 as a universal tool for visualisation and analysis of population-based cancer data and data from cancer registries, especially data from the Czech National Cancer Registry. The SVOD software was designed primarily as an analytical tool on top of existing databases and did not replace their data recording or reporting functions. The functions and services of the SVOD software were universal and usable for processing data from any health registry or more extensive database.

Development of the SVOD software was financially supported by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic (namely its Department of Healthcare) and was organised by the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute as well as the Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses of the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University.

The SVOD software was created in Microsoft Visual C++ programming environment; the Windows template library (WTL) was used as its basis. The SVOD software employed the universal SQL (Standard Query Language) interface to communicate with the database. This allowed the SVOD software to be used as a universal client that could connect to local data on a personal computer and a remote database on a central server. The local SVOD databases were located in Microsoft Access version 97 database files. The SVOD software accessed these files via OLEDB technology using SQL queries. The Microsoft Access database type was chosen because of its high performance and ease of access to the source data. The data model consisted of several primary tables that stored anonymised CNCR data, demographic data and data from other supplementary databases. They also contained sets of code lists and aggregated data for some types of analyses.