BAD-NDRS partnership

What we do?

The BAD-NDRS partnership’s mission is to use high‐quality national skin cancer data to improve patient care, education, healthcare planning and research.

The partnership aims to improve the quality of skin cancer data and encourage inclusion of skin cancer statistics in national publications, reduce regional variation in access and outcomes, and improve equality of care.

The partnership was established in 2020 and meets three times a year to discuss the future direction of the partnership and evaluate project ideas for priority, feasibility and impact.

BAD–NDRS Skin Cancer Service Review Report and Trust Level Dataset is now available

The BAD–NDRS Skin Cancer Service Review is the first national, trust level analysis of skin cancer services across England, covering 2013–2023. The findings reveal rising skin cancer incidence, a tripling of urgent referrals, persistent inequalities in outcomes, and significant variation in services across the country.

We encourage every member to log in and review their local data. This is an opportunity to assess your trust’s data, identify any anomalies or data-quality issues, and raise questions before publication and further dissemination.

Your local expertise and feedback are essential to ensuring the data accurately reflects dermatology services and supports future improvements in care. By working together to understand the challenges highlighted in this review, we can help shape future service development and improve outcomes for patients with skin cancer across England.

 

What we’re working on now

Understanding variation in skin cancer care across England. We are conducting national analyses of skin cancer diagnosis and treatment patterns across NHS trusts and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), examining:

• incidence and referral patterns
• treatment pathways
• waiting times and access to care
• regional variation in outcomes
• the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on services

This work will help identify opportunities for service improvement and support more equitable care across England.

Improving understanding of underserved and higher-risk groups. We are analysing national data to better understand groups whose experiences are often underrepresented in skin cancer research, including:

• younger people
• organ transplant recipients and immunosuppressed individuals
• people with rare skin cancers
• different ethnic and deprivation populations

The aim is to improve visibility, equity, and future service planning for these groups.

Epidemiological research into rare and uncommon skin cancers. The partnership is expanding research into rarer skin cancers to improve understanding of incidence trends, diagnosis pathways, treatment outcomes, geographical variation, long-term patient outcomes. National-level data allows us to study cancers that may not be visible in smaller datasets.

Explore some highlighted Publications and outputs:

1. The Get Data Out (GDO) skin partition and data on incidence, survival, treatment, and routes to diagnosis on all registered skin tumours diagnosed between 2013-19 in England. Openly available data is here and the published article is available here.
2. An analysis of patients by broad ethnic group diagnosed with skin cancer between 2013 and 2020 in England. Describing differences in incidence and patient demographics (age, gender, deprivation, etc.) and tumour specific details (stage, type etc.) by ethnic group. Published article here.
3. Geographic variation of skin cancer by cancer alliance. Published article available here.

Improved the methodology for counting basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) tumours to allow for a more accurate representation of the tumour burden in the UK. Relevant publications here and here.