About the Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy Dataset (SACT)

Cancer chemotherapy has been provided in the NHS for decades but no national recording of treatment has previously existed. Chemotherapy is increasingly successful as a treatment but is ever more expensive and complex. Accurate, timely and complete data collection is now seen as a priority and this is made feasible by the advent of electronic clinical data collection.

An approved dataset has now been developed for national use with data collection commencing in April 2012. There will be key benefits to this national data collection:

• Provide a resource for commissioners, providers of chemotherapy services and for patients and carers.
• It will provide a clear picture of patterns of chemotherapy being given across England by hospital and geographical area. 
• Will show the immediate outcome of treatment and when linked to other data sources, can provide a complete picture of the management of cancer.

Data will be collected on patients receiving cancer chemotherapy in or funded by the NHS in England.  It relates to all cancer patients, both adult and paediatric, in acute inpatient, daycase, outpatient settings and delivery in the community.  It covers chemotherapy treatment for all solid tumour and haematological malignancies, including those in clinical trials.