About the SCARD Project
The SCCANZ Surgical Audit Project is a surgical log designed for doctors who treat skin malignancies. It has been designed to facilitate the easy recording of useful data at the time of treatment so that the treatment of skin cancers can be tracked.
The On-line version has now superseded the previous version. There is now no need to download and install any software.
Doctors using the earlier version will be able to transfer their data to the On-line version. (email
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to find out how to do this).
The Online version has all the software and data on a central server.
All data including patient identity is encrypted during transfer and on the central sever. Security of data is achieved through the use of a 256bit SSL certificate, twice the encryption strength of that used by the Taxation Office.
The participating doctor holds a password key, chosen and held only by him or her, which enables him or her to unlock the encryption. The on-line version has been developed because of difficulty with the software on some computers and also to allow access to a particular doctor’s data from different locations (eg multiple practices and the doctor’s home). It also permits the use of different systems such as Mac.
As well as the tracking of specimens this project also facilitates the generation of a confidential report on your computer. You are able to obtain a breakdown of your specimen management details including a breakdown by diagnosis, the number of new lesions sampled to exclude melanoma to find one melanoma, the percentage of new lesions treated to exclude non-melanoma skin cancer which are malignant, your diagnostic accuracy, the percentage of definitive managements which achieve adequate margins and other relevant details.
This project also gives you the opportunity (if you so choose) to upload de-identified data to our website so that we can produce a report using pooled results. This report is then made available to you on our website for the purpose of comparison to your own confidential report generated on your own computer.
A further feature of this project is a research project in which pooled results are being analysed with the intention of producing a research paper. One of the planned purposes of the research project is to evaluate the impact of dermoscopy. The other intention is to examine patterns of skin cancer and its management in the Australasian setting hopefully in the future with comparison to international settings. Approval has been granted by the Ethics Committee of the RACGP. Collection of data for the research project commenced at the beginning of 2008 and data collection for the currently approved research phase of the project will end on December 31, 2013.
This project has been approved by the RACGP for 30 category 1 Clinical Audit points in the current triennium (2011-2013). To obtain these points you are required to collect data for 2 months, generate a confidential report on your own computer, submit your de-identified data for the purpose of obtaining a "pooled report", then collect data for another 2 months and repeat the reporting process. You are asked to submit your CME number when you register to participate in the audit project.
Although the SCCANZ Surgical Audit Project is proceeding as a 2 month plus 2 month audit with respect to CME points, we would encourage you to use it as an ongoing permanent surgical log and self-audit tool.
The Audit has been developed by Dr Cliff Rosendahl (FSCCANZ) and Tobias (Toby) Wilson (HASCCANZ) as downloadable system that can provide users with reports on the collective results.
External Providers:
The SCARD project utilizes DirectNET (directnet.com.au) for the continuous data backups required to keep this system operational.
BillBuzz (billbuzz.com.au) provides much of the messaging interface and sms/email gateway for system alerts.
