ideasIdea

Open-source cancer registry-in-a-box for low-resource settings

A registry-in-a-box would be a free, ready-to-run cancer registry system, working on phones and without constant internet, so any hospital anywhere can start counting and following its cancer patients.

Fewer than one in five people in low- and middle-income countries are covered by a high-quality cancer registry. IARC's CanReg5 is the established open tool; the proposal modernises it as a mobile-first, offline-capable system with built-in ICD-O coding assistance, staging, treatment and follow-up modules, automated data-quality checks and export to the Global Initiative for Cancer Registry Development, funded as a global public good with regional support hubs.

Hypothesis

Registry-in-a-box deployment will double the number of population-based registries meeting IARC quality criteria in sub-Saharan Africa within seven years.

Rationale

DHIS2 became the health information backbone of more than 70 countries by being free, offline-capable and supported; cancer registration has no equivalent modern tool.

What would test it

Deploy in ten hospital registries across three countries; measure case completeness and follow-up rates at 24 months against CanReg5 sites.

Maturity

early clinical

Who has to act

philanthropy

Cost to try

Medium ($1M to $50M)

Years to first evidence

Bottlenecks it attacks

Data silos · Records, scans, genomes and outcomes sit in separate systems that cannot talk. Every patient's experience is lost to the next.
Most of the world has almost no cancer care · Seven in ten cancer deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries, where radiotherapy, pathology, surgery and drugs are scarce.

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