BreastCheck (The National Breast Screening Programme)
National Screening Service.
2000 (three health board regions).
2005 (partial expansion).
2007 (national).
BreastCheck is a Government funded programme providing breast screening and invites women aged between 50 to 69 years for a free mammogram on an area-by-area basis every two years. The aim of BreastCheck is to reduce deaths from breast cancer by finding and treating the disease at an early stage. The purpose of the database is to provide a population register containing demographic data to identify eligible women for the purposes of screening. Clinical data is collected on individuals that receive a service, which is provided by clinicians and entered by data officers.
National – BreastCheck has completed an age extension project to include all women aged between 50 to 69 years to be invited for routine breast screening every two years.
2000 - Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, Longford, Cavan, Monaghan, Louth and Meath.
2005 - Addition of Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford.
2007 - Expansion to full national coverage including all 26 counties.
2000-2016 Data imported to include age range from 48 years up to 65 years old
2016 - age range extension to include up to 70 years old.
BreastCheck is a Government funded programme providing breast screening to women through a network of four static centres and a number of mobile units. Screening is offered to eligible women by personal invitation for a free mammogram on an area-by-area basis every two years.
BreastCheck compiles a register (list) of women eligible for screening from information supplied by the Department of Social Protection (pre-2020 also included other sources of data). BreastCheck is allowed to source this information under The Health (Provision of Information) Act, 1997.
BreastCheck & National Screening Service Staff
Host Hospitals/Private Hospitals providing services or care to our service users
NCRI
General Practitioners
(See note under Other comments re: service providers).
Client demographic data; clinical examination/results of screening; further assessments/data on cancers detected; outcome of treatments/follow-up data may be included after consideration; standardised data sheets completed by surgeons; surgical data on biopsy reports (in cases where women attend another hospital for pathology and/or surgery); standardised data forms completed by pathologists; biopsy reports/hospital pathology records (in cases where women attend another hospital for pathology and/or surgery).
Not available.
Data dictionary currently in final stages of review.
PPSN - incomplete coverage within the data.
IHI to be incorporated into new BreastCheck IT system (CRIS) which is under development.
Place of residence.
Gender-Data selected by default using gender by data providers.
Monthly upload of files received from the provider. There is also a BreastCheck website facility for self-registration by women. External agency carries out a de-duplication process every 6 weeks.
BreastCheck SNOMED dataset currently under development with the SNOMED CT Irish National Release Centre for implementation in the new BreastCheck IT system (Client Radiology Information System - new BreastCheck IT system under development)
Approximately 280,000 eligible women to be invited for screening annually.
The target uptake for the programme is >70%.
Approximately 560,000 active clients on register.
Annually.
Programme report and data requests.
No.
Maintenance of the population register is by an external data management company.
Outsourced letters, Call management and Text Messaging providers have access to our data but are not data users. They provide services on behalf of BreastCheck utilising our data.