CervicalCheck (The National Cervical Screening Programme)
National Screening Service.
2000 (phase 1)
2008 (national programme established).
The overall aim of CervicalCheck is to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer by detecting changes in the cells of the cervix before they become cancerous. The purpose of the database is to provide a population register containing demographic data to identify eligible women for the purposes of screening. The database also contains clinical data so that women who have had screening tests can be contacted for follow-up treatments and clinical referral recommendations.
National – principally women aged between 25 and 65 years, additionally some women aged less than 25 years and over 65 years where there is a clinical requirement.
Women and people with a cervix can be added to the register via three pathways:
1. Notification from the Dept. of Social Protection,
2. Self-register online or by calling freephone
3.Attend for a screening test in primary care/attendance at a programme Colposcopy clinic.
Records will remain inactive until the women reaches 24 years and 6 months.
CervicalCheck maintains a population register containing demographic data of eligible women and people with a cervix aged 25 to 65 for the purposes of screening. The screening interval for women aged between 25 to 29 years is three years and for women aged 30 to 65 years is five years. It also contains clinical data so that women who have had cervical screening tests can be contacted for follow up treatments and clinical referral recommendations.
Internal stakeholders- NSS and Programme staff. External stakeholders- database software providers, letter printing company, document scanning company, call management centre, screening laboratory staff (clinical and administrative), histopathology laboratories- (clinical and administrative), hospital colposcopy staff (clinical and administrative) and General Practitioners and their staff (practice nurse and admin). Hospital MDT where cases are discussed NCRI use anonymised data for statistical purposes. CERVIVA use anonymised data for statistical purposes.
Client demographic data - Date of birth; mother’s maiden name;
To maintain confidentiality, each woman has a unique identification number on the register, known as the Cervical
Screening Programme ID (CSP ID).
Cytology, HPV testing, colposcopy and histology clinical data in relation to a woman’s screening test and any follow up treatment is also captured.
Not available. Development of a data dictionary has commenced and will be available in 2022.
PPSN – yes.
IHI-a field to be added to CervicalCheck register when IHI available.
Gender, place of residence.
The processes for data collection are:
- a monthly electronic feed in a standard format from Department of Social Protection which is imported into the Register (to update demographics only);
- daily electronic feeds from service providers (screening tests results and colposcopy data, web import) and monthly or quarterly softcopy feeds (histology data) which update clinical details but can also update demographic data (in a standard format agreed between CervicalCheck and the service providers)
- Updates from women and GP practices via telephone, letter, email or the website to register a woman’s demographics for the programme or to update their existing demographic data.
SNOMED coding for histology results.
Approximately 295,000 women are invited annually for a cervical screening test.
The target coverage for the programme is >80%.
Approximately 1.3 million active clients on register.
Annually.
Programme report and data requests.
No.
A number of providers of General Practice management software products have developed electronic versions of the CervicalCheck cervical cytology and colposcopy referral forms. Not all of the fields listed are mandatory so there will be variance in the range of data, outside of minimum demographics, particularly clinical data, captured for each event for a woman.