CanShare update April 2025
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Seek and discover, discover and know, know and become enlightened. Tēnā koutou katoa, Welcome to the latest edition of the CanShare newsletter. The Raurau Ngaehe oncology and haematology ePrescribing system is now live — the first application in Aotearoa to fully implement CanShare standards — enabling 600 clinicians across the Northern Region to deliver over 40,000 treatments annually through a safe, cloud-based platform. ACT-NOW continues to support systemic therapy standardisation, with over 800 regimens now published and nationwide maintenance workshops scheduled for later this year. The Radiation Oncology Collection (ROC) has received full 2024 data submissions and is reviewing governance arrangements to better align with the broader CanShare programme. Updated business rules for radiation oncology referrals have also been released to promote consistency and equity in waitlist management. Meanwhile, 627 SNOMED CT reference sets have been published by CanShare in the April 2025 NZ SNOMED CT edition — enabling standardised cancer data capture across the motu. In support of expanded access to cancer medicines, we have also developed new SNOMED CT modelling templates to capture complex pathology ancillary study data. These were recently presented at the SNOMED International Business Meetings in Norway, with the goal of achieving international consistency and maintainability through global collaboration. From now on we will publish our CanShare newsletters twice a year — around April and October — to provide more comprehensive, focused updates. We have also set up a new email address - canshare@teaho.govt.nz. You can send in any questions, requests for assistance or who to contact. We will check the inbox regularly to respond to you as soon as possible. |
A new chapter in digital cancer care has begun with the launch of the Raurau Ngaehe oncology and haematology ePrescribing system — the first in Aotearoa New Zealand to fully align with CanShare standards. This is collaboration between CanShare, Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora Northern, and Valentia Technologies, was completed October 2024.
Raurau Ngaehe is now in use by around 600 clinicians working across the Northern region, supporting the safe and timely delivery of approximately 40,000 cancer treatments every year. It replaces paper-based prescribing workflows with a cloud-based digital platform that enhances safety, visibility, and consistency across services, benefiting more than 5,400 cancer patients annually.
The system has been rolled out across haematology and oncology services for children and adults at Middlemore, Waitematā, Northland, and Auckland hospitals. Clinicians using Raurau Ngaehe are accessing real-time prescription records, automatically calculated dosages, and integrated treatment summaries — reducing errors, improving communication between teams, and enabling more local delivery of care.
Developed using SNOMED CT for clinical terminology and FHIR for near real-time data exchange, Raurau Ngaehe is the first CanShare-compliant ePrescribing system in Aotearoa. It integrates with the Northern region’s clinical portal, ensuring patient summaries are automatically generated and visible to the wider care team. This eliminates the need to scan or manually transfer prescriptions.
While the system is designed to support data sharing, this functionality is yet to be enabled. Once activated, it will allow for seamless and secure information exchange between point-of-care systems and national datasets — a key milestone in CanShare’s vision to underpin equitable, timely, and data-informed cancer care.
The project has also embedded ACT-NOW chemotherapy treatment protocols, aligning regional practice with national standards, and significantly increasing data coverage for systemic anti-cancer therapy. This opens the door for richer national reporting and deeper equity analysis — identifying where gaps exist and where resources are needed most.
Raurau Ngaehe exemplifies the power of health sector collaboration, clinician leadership, and data-driven design. CanShare is proud to support this ground-breaking system and continues its mahi to ensure high-quality cancer informatics serve all New Zealanders.
The Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) Regimen Library (https://srl.org.nz/regimens) is a joint initiative with CanShare and the New Zealand Formulary. It is a key component of ACT-NOW, and the regimens are an integral part of ensuring that data is available on what systemic anti-cancer therapy patients are receiving across Aotearoa. The newly funded cancer medicines will be added to this database to evaluate the roll-out in the future.
All tumour streams for medical oncology and haematology are now represented on the website with 800 regimens currently published. The project is shortly starting the yearly maintenance reviews of regimens, the schedule for this will be on the website by end of April. Workshops will run from May – September 2025 and there will be a link on the website for medical oncologists and haematologists across New Zealand to sign up.
For monthly updates on cancer regimen development sign up to the newsletter at: https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/CDACC2C97C543F5E
We are pleased to announce that we have received all quarter four (October-December) data submissions for 2024 from our contributing departments. This means we now have a complete set of ROC data for the entire year of 2024.
Each department’s timely and accurate submissions are sincerely appreciated. Your willingness and ongoing contribution are critical in helping maintain comprehensive and up-to-date national records. A subset of data is available for wider viewing on the Radiation Oncology Online Tool (ROC dashboard), and we plan to update with 2024 data in the near future.
The National Radiation Oncology Group has established business rules to ensure the consistent management and monitoring of referrals to public radiation oncology services. These rules have been endorsed by the Radiation Oncology Working Group (ROWG).
The business rules provide best practice clinical criteria for radiation oncology services to follow when a person is referred for their first specialist assessment. These criteria are based on the type and stage of cancer and the urgency of starting treatment. However, these rules are guidelines only, and specialists may recommend different timeframes or approaches based on individual patient needs, concerns, or other health conditions.
In addition to guiding clinical practice, the business rules support the collection of consistent and accurate waitlist data across the country. The collected data:
· helps to monitor and manage radiation oncology waitlists at public hospitals and services so patients receive timely treatment.
· informs decision making at local, regional, and national levels to ensure services are provided equitably across the country.
Read the latest radiation oncology waitlist data business rules on Te Whatu Ora website: Radiation oncology – Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.
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SNOMED CT April release We have developed 627 CanShare reference sets for Aotearoa, providing standard sets of SNOMED CT concepts for recording, sharing and querying cancer data. These reference sets ensure consistent display of cancer data across the country, supporting various aspects of cancer care, including diagnostics, treatment plans, national registers, and screening programmes. The April 2025 NZ edition includes 53 new and 115 updated CanShare reference sets, 459 static reference sets, and 443 new concepts. Release notes outlining the content of the New Zealand extension and CanShare reference sets can be found on the SNOMED International Release Management page. You can view this content online using the SNOMED CT browser and accessed via API using the New Zealand Health Terminology Service (NZHTS). SNOMED CT Hui SNOMED CT ancillary studies These templates have been developed in collaboration with Prof Scott Campbell of the University of Nebraska. In April we presented our work at the SNOMED International Business Meetings which were held in Norway. This event provided a platform to showcase our innovative approach and discuss further collaborations to ensure international consistency, editorial guidance, and the potential to handover ongoing maintenance. |
The CanShare and Te Rēhita Mate Ūtaetae – Breast Cancer Foundation National Register (BCFNR) teams are working together to reduce duplication in data collection and improve the timeliness of data, which we believe will help streamline processes and provide better support for patients.
As a first step, we are assisting the BCFNR by aligning data fields to nationally approved standards, ensuring that our data is robust and comparable. Additionally, we are supporting SNOMED CT coding of the register fields. This effort will standardise data and ensure consistency, making it easier to share and analyse information across different platforms.
We believe this collaboration will pave the way for more efficient and effective data management, ultimately leading to improved care and outcome for breast cancer patients.