Reporting - pathology

The Cancer Registry of Norway receives copies of around 270,000 pathology reports annually, and the number is increasing every year. All the country's pathology departments report in, both pathology departments at hospitals and the two private pathology laboratories (Fürst and Unilabs Laboratory Medicine).

What remittances should the Cancer Registry have?

Reporting of pathology information to the Cancer Registry of Norway is mainly based on NORPAT. The NORPAT codes that are subject to notification are described in the compilation file for the NORPAT coding system and in the specification from the Cancer Registry of Norway, which you will find on the right side of this page.

Electronic reporting of pathology information

An important goal for the Cancer Registry of Norway is that all pathology information should be reported electronically from the pathology departments via the Norwegian Health Network. We have created a technical specification that describes requirements for files and transmissions. This can be found on the right side of the page. The specification also covers reporting to the Mammography Programme and the Cervical Cancer Screening Programme.

Structured answers/pathology templates

Another important goal for the Cancer Registry of Norway is to reuse structured information from different professional systems as far as possible. For the field of pathology, this means that the Cancer Registry of Norway must be a driving force for the development and introduction of structured diagnostic summaries and pathology templates/templates in the pathology systems.

The Cancer Registry of Norway cooperates with, among others, the Norwegian Directorate of eHealth, the Norwegian Society of Pathologists, the Digital Pathology Project and the pathology communities in general. It is important for the Cancer Registry of Norway to ensure that pathology templates meet both the needs of the registries for structured information and the needs of pathologists for good work tools that ensure good and complete descriptions and assessments.

NORPAT

In the autumn of 2017, the new version of the NORPAT coding system was completed. This is an update of the old SNOMED coding system that was last changed in 2002.

The Norwegian Directorate of eHealth, the Norwegian Society of Pathology and the Cancer Registry of Norway collaborate on annual updates of NORPAT. The current version should be implemented in the pathology systems as of 01.01.2018..