NPCR-AERRO Workgroups and Activities

The National Program of Cancer Registries-Advancing E-cancer Reporting and Registry Operations (NPCR-AERRO) is a collaborative effort to advance automation of cancer registration by developing a set of cancer surveillance models, requirements, and products that—

• Identify and describe consistent processes and data reporting standards.
• Can be used by multiple data sources for reporting to hospital and state cancer registries.
• Include products, infrastructure, and implementation guidelines supporting electronic reporting from data sources to registries and from registries to the national programs and organizations, including the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), NPCR, the Commission on Cancer (CoC), and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).

For more information about NPCR-AERRO activities, please see NPCR-AERRO: Developing a Cancer Surveillance Informatics Structure in the New E-Health Environment [PDF-1.1MB].

The project approach is to—

• Model consensus best practices for electronic cancer registration and reporting.
• Analyze and design requirements for data and tools to define best practices further.
• Implement best practice models and products.

The NPCR-AERRO Team coordinates several workgroups—

• The Clinic/Physician Office Workgroup developed an automated electronic process to identify and report cancer cases using the clinic/physician office electronic medical record (EMR) to report to the central cancer registries. This workgroup has been combined with a new NAACCR workgroup that was formed to continue addressing physician reporting of cancer data to central cancer registries as part of Meaningful Use Stage 2.
• The Central Cancer Registry Workgroup develops guidelines and an implementation strategy for central registries to use electronic reporting.
• The Hospital Operations Workgroup improved automation of hospital health records and cancer registration processes. This workgroup has been dissolved, but developed products are provided for use.

The NPCR-AERRO Team participates in two major activity areas—

• As part of eHealth Initiatives activities, NPCR represents the cancer registry community in national and international EHR development initiatives.
• Electronic Pathology (ePath) Reporting activities initiate and improve electronic anatomical pathology reporting from laboratories to state central cancer registries.

CyberView: NPCR-AERRO models are available for display and download through this application.

• Model drilldown: Drill down from hospital, state/regional, or national overviews to more detail.
• Model map: Map and list of models for quick access to any level of detail.
• Glossary [PDF-777KB]: Terms and references used in the project.