NAoMe Quarterly Data Dashboard

The purpose of the National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NAoMe) is to evaluate the patterns of care and outcomes for people diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in England and Wales, and to support services to improve the quality of care for these people. The NAoMe includes all people diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer either at initial diagnosis or at recurrence.

This Quarterly Clinical Performance Indicator Report published for the NAoMe has moved from an interactive Excel Worksheet to a web-based (RShiny) dashboard (since January 2025). Data available to the audit for this quarterly report were based on patient-level records from the Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD) linked to other routine national data.

This quarterly report provides an overview of the completeness and quality of key data items provided in the RCRD for people diagnosed with breast cancer in England between 01 October 2020 and 30 September 2023.

What data has been used to produce this Quarterly Report?

The RCRD is compiled mainly from information collected within the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset (COSD). Data in the RCRD are made available more quickly than gold standard Cancer Registration records however, the range of data items available is limited and many data items provided within the Cancer Registration records (and linked cancer datasets) are unavailable. For breast cancer this means information on tumour characteristics such as estrogen receptor (ER) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) status has not historically available. Additionally, the RCRD does not have complete coverage of all people with a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer within England during the reporting period.

Patient-level records in the RCRD were provided linked to other routine national datasets, including Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HESAPC) records. For the NAoMe HESAPC data is required to define the cohort of people included, specifically it is currently essential in identifying patients with evidence of metastatic disease within 12 months of diagnosis for whom the cancer stage is not recorded as stage 4.

The NAoMe quarterly reports include audit performance indicators as well as data quality metrics. Going forward, the team will continue development work, in consultation with stakeholders, to determine which further audit indicators are appropriate for quarterly reporting using the RCRD and linked data. These indicators are likely to concern the diagnostic pathway, treatments and outcomes.