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Dr. Monika Hackl Austrian National Cancer Registry |
Motivation for standing for election
My motivation for working in the ENCR Steering Committee is to make technology usable through interoperability in the healthcare sector. Human resources must be invested in content and not wasted on problems arising from different data formats and structural breaks. Documentation in many cancer registries is still done manually by selecting and transcribing relevant medical content from medical records, as these are not sufficiently structured. Therefore, I would like to focus on the further development of standardized and interoperable data sets. It is important to connect people working in cancer registries with people working on e-health topics in order to improve data exchange in healthcare.
I have a lot of experience in population-based cancer registration in Europe, as I have been managing the Austrian National Cancer Registry at Statistics Austria (National Statistical Office) for over 20 years. An essential aspect of my tasks is the improvement of data quality, while at the same time increasing timeliness. To this end, I work together with hospitals, hospital operators, regional population-based and clinical cancer registries as well as health policy makers.
As Austria has a national law that obliges hospitals to report new cancer cases to the national cancer registry, I know about the importance of data harmonization, in terms of content and technology. Many different people from different professional groups working in different IT environments are involved in the documentation of cancer cases in Austria. This situation is similar in other countries, even if they do not have a legal obligation for hospitals to report.
On the one hand, people need reliable information and definitions for the variables that are collected in a cancer registry. Therefore, the further development of standardized data sets as well as recommendation and checks on plausibility have a high priority for me. In addition, training is needed so that all people involved in cancer registration have the same level of knowledge, regardless of whether they are employed in the cancer registry or in a hospital, e.g. as a pathologist or medical typist.
On the other hand, not only standardized but also interoperable data sets are needed. In my opinion, one goal for cancer registration in Europe is the interoperability of data in the healthcare system. Structured, standardized documentation in hospitals will then also lead to an improvement in data quality in terms of completeness and comprehensiveness.
There are already promising approaches like IHE that I, being a member of the ENCR Steering Committee, would like to publicise and promote in the European cancer registries. IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) is a global, independent initiative of experts from the medical and IT sectors with the aim of improving data exchange in the healthcare sector. To this end, IHE standardizes and optimizes the use of IT systems based on existing standards such as HL7 and DICOM. The priority is to achieve efficient interoperability between the systems.
I am looking forward to manage this challenge in an international team. Together we can serve the well-being of patients with qualitative European data and research on cancer.
Short CV
Work Experience
2002–now: Austrian National Cancer Registry
Head of Austrian National Cancer Registry • Statistics Austria
2001–2006 Various educational institutions
Series of lectures related to statistics at the • University of Vienna • Military Academy Wiener Neustadt • College of Higher Education (Austrian Chamber of Trade, Commerce and Industry), Vienna
1995–2002 General Hospital Vienna
Biomedical scientist • General Hospital Vienna, Department of Neurosurgery, Intensive Care Unit
Education
2005 –2014: Academic studies: Medical Science, Programme “Tumourbiology-Oncology"
Medical University of Vienna, Department of Epidemiology PhD thesis: “Completeness estimation of Austrian cancer incidence data“
1993 – 2001 Academic studies: Psychology
University of Vienna, Institute for Health and Environment Diploma thesis: “Physical and psychological factors of sound pollution”
1992 – 1994 College: Biomedical Science
General Hospital of Vienna
Publications
my most important
Hackl M, Waldhoer T.; Estimation of completeness of case ascertainment of Austrian cancer incidence data using the flow method. Eur J Public Health. 2013 Oct;23(5):889-93. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/cks125. Epub 2012 Sep 22. PMID: 23002230
my most recent
Brönimann S, Mun DH, Hackl M, Yang L, Shariat SF, Waldhoer T.; Increase and Plateauing of Testicular Cancer Incidence in Austria-A Time Trend Analysis of the Past Four Decades. Eur Urol Open Sci. 2023 Feb 6;49:104-109. doi: 10.1016/j.euros.2023.01.005.
Affiliations
• Member of the Austrian Ministry of Health´s advisory board for oncology
• Member of the Advisory Board of the Robert Koch Institute for technical advice and support of the Center for Cancer Registry Data, Germany (2018-2021)
• Austrian Statistical Society
• Austrian Society of Epidemiology