Linking medical registries in the new LinKMedR project

Anne Regierer, Head of the Rheumatology Registry Research Group at the DRFZ, is project coordinator of the newly launched research project “Linkage of cancer registry data with other medical registries (LinKMedR)”. This cooperation project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Health for 12 months, aims to develop a process for linking data from state cancer registries with other medical registries in compliance with data protection regulations. The RABBIT registry run by the DRFZ and two other disease registries want to use the Germany-wide data from the clinical cancer registries to analyze cancer risks.

The LinKMedR is a cooperation project between the RABBIT registry, the German multiple sclerosis registry, the cystic fibrosis registry and the state cancer registries of Niedersachsen and Rheinland-Pfalz. Analysis data sets from the respective medical registry in combination with defined data from the standardized oncological basic data set (oBDS) of the German cancer registries are to be created for the first time.

Anne Regierer explained: “LinKMedR is a key project for us in order to make even better use of our RABBIT registry data. For example, it is a burning question for our rheumatology patients who have been diagnosed with cancer, which therapies used to treat their rheumatic condition can be used safely. We are trying to evaluate this and other questions with the help of the cancer registry data.”