Research

The Belgian Cancer Registry (BCR) undertakes research to map both the number of cancers and their impact on people and society. In this way, BCR helps to find answers to the most relevant and urgent scientific questions in cancer research.

Our research is underpinned by our unique databases of national data on cancer diagnoses and screening. In addition, BCR researchers are able to further enrich these data, if necessary, with the permission of the Informatieveiligheidscomité (IVC) (Information Security Committee), with administrative population data including mortality statistics, reimbursement data from insurance institutions, and minimum hospital data such as length of stay and admission dates, nursing unit code, etc.

More information on current and past research projects can be found below. Filters can be applied based on the following research domains

COVID-19 and cancer: assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting changes in the organisation of healthcare for cancer patients.

Cancer clusters: developing systematic cancer surveillance and detecting clusters in Flanders in relation to early detection of environment-related health damage, etc.

Cancer screening: monitoring and evaluating existing population screening programmes and scientific support for current and future population screening programmes. More information on screening and ongoing population screening can be found here.

Classical epidemiology: describing and updating both the incidence, prevalence and survival of cancer in Belgium, and possible influencing factors.

Quality of life: assessing and implementing patient-reported outcomes and experiences based on Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) and Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMs).

Quality of care: selecting and calculating relevant indicators for care process and outcome with a focus on the approach to diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of cancer patients. Feedback is provided to hospitals, governments, government agencies and citizens.

Methodological innovation: developing and implementing new methodologies to obtain a more detailed description of cancer incidence within a population and of cancer survival.

Inequalities: studying the association between socio-economic and sociodemographic parameters and cancer.

Improvement of registration data: continually improving the quality and completeness of cancer registration data.