Oral Cancer, Socioeconomic Status, and Access to Health Care in BC
Patient Locations
Intended Data
Data Available
BC Cancer Agency Centre (BCCRC)
This project intended to use a data registry, maintained by the BC Cancer Research Centre, to identify areas within the province where oral cancer are located. The registry contains records dating back to 1969 of over 10000 patients. Patient information are recorded within 90 fields of over 14000 variables. Included within the registry were six-digit postal codes of patient residences.
Ajit Auluck, a Clinician Scientist at the BCCRC, spent many months re-categorizing and verifying the data within the registry. He noted several problems existing within the registry that needed to be considered were it to be used in a spatial analysis project. The first records were collected in 1969, not according to the strict definitions and protocols set in 1970. Therefore to address any epistemological gaps or ontology concerns, the data recorded in 1969 would not be considered in the analysis. The effect of eliminating one-year of record within a registry compiled over four-decades is believed to be minimal. The records collected in 2011 would also not be considered in the analysis because many records collected in 2011 were not yet added to the registry at the time of planning this project. It was believed eliminating all records collected in 2011 from the analysis would be a better alternative than incorporating incomplete data.
Ajit also noted that although the registry contained six-digit postal codes of patient residences, this project must instead use the postal code of the medical clinic at which the patient was diagnosed. He explained this was due to privacy concerns to releasing precise location data of patients. Also relocation within a city or town is very common. As a result, many patient records contain multiple postal codes. It was believed medical clinic would be a suitable representation of a patient’s location.
Ultimately this registry was not available for use in this project. Nadine Schuurman, Blake Walker, and Ajit Auluck spent considerable time to try and acquire the registry for this project and our team appreciates their efforts.
BCCRC Vancouver office.
Image Source: BCCRC
Injury Data from SFU GIS and Health Laboratory
Due accessibility issues and patient confidentiality, the BCCRC registry was ultimately unavailable for this project.
While the unavailability of the registry meant our team was unable to answer the questions initially set at the beginning of the project, our team still wished to conduct the analysis methodologies we had developed and report their effectiveness and limitations.
Injury patient location data from the SFU GIS and Health Laboratory was acquired as surrogate for oral cancer patient data. The data consists of residence coordinates of injury patients within British Columbia. The locations of these coordinates were randomized to within a one-kilometre radius to protect the privacy of the patients.
Injury data available for spatial analysis of project.
