# A live national dashboard of stage at diagnosis as the scorecard for early detection

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-prev-live-stage-dashboard/  
OnCo record `idea-prev-live-stage-dashboard` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

You cannot manage what you do not measure quickly. Publishing stage at diagnosis by cancer and region every quarter, not years later, would show whether detection efforts are working.

## Summary

Registry stage data typically lag two to three years. Propose near-real-time staging capture from pathology and multidisciplinary-team systems feeding a public dashboard, with region-level early-stage proportions and route to diagnosis, so screening and symptom-pathway interventions can be evaluated within a year. England's Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset shows feasibility.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Quarterly stage reporting with under six months' lag is achievable for at least 90% of cases and shortens the evaluation cycle of detection interventions from five years to under two.
- Rationale: Fast feedback is what let COVID dashboards drive policy; cancer detection has no equivalent.
- Proposed test: Build in one national registry; compare completeness and lag against gold-standard registration.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: data

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (The hardest cancers are found late): Crosby et al., Early detection of cancer (Science 2022): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay9040

## Connected records

- collections: [SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results)](https://onco.cc/collections/seer/)
- fronts: [Early Detection & Screening](https://onco.cc/fronts/early-detection/)
- terms: [Stage shift](https://onco.cc/terms/stage-shift/), [TNM staging](https://onco.cc/terms/tnm-staging/)
- bottlenecks: [Data silos](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-data-silos/), [The hardest cancers are found late](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-early-detection/)
- key papers: [Early detection of cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-crosby-science/)

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