International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting (ICCR) 

  Newsletter (April)

The International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting (ICCR), founded in 2011 by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC) and the US (CAP), UK (RCPath) and Australasian (RCPA) Colleges of Pathology, was established to explore the possibilities of a collaborative approach to the development of common, internationally standardised and evidence-based cancer reporting protocols for surgical pathology specimens. The ICCR, recognising that standardised cancer datasets have been shown to provide significant benefits for patients and efficiencies for organisations through the ease and completeness of data capture undertook to use the best international approaches and the knowledge and experience of expert pathologists, and produce cancer datasets which would ensure that cancer reports across the world will be of the same high quality – ensuring completeness, consistency, clarity, conciseness and clinical utility.

Representatives from the four countries participating in the initial collaboration undertook a pilot project in 2011 to develop four cancer datasets.  The expert committees, comprising many world-leading experts, produced cancer datasets for Lung, Melanoma, Prostate (Radical Prostatectomy), and Endometrium and by using different processes for collaboration in each of the expert groups, were able to optimize the method for international dataset development efforts.

Following on from the success of this pilot project, the ICCR was joined by the European Society of Pathology (ESP) in 2013.  This year we are hoping to incorporate as a not-for-profit organisation with CAP, RCPath UK, RCPA, CAP-ACP and ESP as foundation members to allow us to expand and develop many more datasets.   After incorporation we hope to invite others to join as members.

If you have any questions or would like additional information about the ICCR please email me,

Best regards

Meagan Judge
Project Manager