INCA: Powering smarter cancer care

INCA (Information Networks for Cancer Care) is a national IT platform that supports the management of cancer registries for both healthcare and research. Operational since 2007, the platform is jointly developed by Sweden’s six Regional Cancer Centres (RCCs).

INCA provides a framework for building and maintaining quality registers, as well as generating reports and statistics based on the collected data.

Purpose and goal

The INCA platform is designed to:

• Consolidate all diagnosis-specific cancer registries onto a unified IT platform
• Address users’ needs for web-based registers, enabling clinics and units to report data electronically instead of using paper forms
• Present reports based on nationally unified data collected
• Provide real-time access to clinic-specific data, with options for regional and national comparisons.
• Create a common IT system for all RCCs
• Support structured and coordinated work with national quality registers

Solution: “We are creating the cancer care of the future. Today.”

INCA is a flexible and configurable platform, primarily built on Microsoft technology and complemented by Linux servers for statistical processing. It offers graphical tools for creating and maintaining records, including tables, variables, web pages, and forms.

Additionally, INCA provides a comprehensive REST API, enabling seamless integration with external systems. Users can choose to work through the graphical interface, via the APIs, or a combination of both.

Each entity using INCA is responsible for configuring its own organisational structure, roles, permissions, and the content and functionality of its registers.

Thanks to INCA, Sweden’s six Regional Cancer Centres (RCCs) have successfully established a unified national database. This benefits both clinicians and researchers across the country by providing access to a larger, more current dataset to support the development and evaluation of new cancer treatment methods.

INCA has also played a key role in structuring and enhancing the understanding of patient well-being. By collecting and visualizing data in a standardized format, it fosters a shared perspective and common language among healthcare professionals in cancer care. This unified approach promotes collaboration across regional boundaries and enables more informed decision-making based on a shared knowledge base.

Improved data quality and accessibility allow for faster and more efficient evaluation of new treatment strategies—ultimately benefiting all cancer patients in Sweden.

Moreover, INCA serves as a generic design tool that can be adapted to build other types of registry solutions beyond cancer care.

Technology

INCA is a web-based platform developed using the following technologies:

• External reporting: SITHS certificates via web services
• Back-end: C#, ASP.NET Web API, IIS, SQL Server
• Front-end: AngularJS, React
• Statistics: R, RStudio Server

Roles and responsibilities

Following a public procurement process, Sogeti was awarded the contract to develop the INCA platform. Today, a dedicated Scrum team at Sogeti is responsible for its ongoing development and maintenance.

Product ownership resides with Regional Cancer Center West, which oversees the platform’s evolution in close collaboration with the other RCCs across Sweden.