Supporting service development and best practice
We develop – and support the implementation of – evidence-based frameworks and patient-centred care pathways that drive best practice in paediatric cancer care in Victoria.
Our frameworks and pathways support service development and planning across the state, and also direct our workforce education and training, the programs we run, and our service improvement projects, to connect and drive best practice throughout the patient care journey.
As part of the VICS, PICS can access and use data related to childhood cancer care in Victoria to support health providers with service planning, delivery, and improvement.
Care pathways
Care pathways guide the delivery of consistent, high-quality, evidence-based care to improve patient experiences and outcomes.
They map the journey for specific disease/tumour types, align with key service improvement priorities, aim to foster an understanding of the whole pathway – including its distinct components – and serve as a reminder of the patient and their caregivers as the constants in the care continuum.
Victorian paediatric oncology care pathways
Paediatric oncology care pathways are intended to improve outcomes by facilitating standardised and consistent, high-quality, evidence-based care for children and adolescents with cancer.
Our paediatric oncology care pathways document includes the fundamentals of care, applicable to all tumour streams, and the specific paediatric oncology care pathways for acute leukaemia, central nervous system tumours, and solid tumours.
Adolescent and young adult optimal care pathway
The Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Optimal Care Pathway is endorsed by Cancer Australia and the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care as Australia’s national guide to best-practice cancer care for adolescents and young adults.
Developed by PICS and the Victorian Adolescent & Young Adult Cancer Service at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, with an expert reference group chaired by Professor Ian Olver at the University of Adelaide, the pathway guides health professionals to consider a young person with cancer not just in the context of their disease, but equally in the context of their life stage, to reduce disparity and improve outcomes and quality of care.
"This pathway will help standardise care so that wherever our adolescent and young adults with cancer enter the treatment process they will be able to access the best evidence-based care"
- Professor Ian Olver
Service frameworks
Our frameworks inform the care pathways and scopes of practice for paediatric services in Victoria that care for cancer patients.
Together, they provide a foundation to sustainable and equitable cancer care for children and adolescents across Victoria, throughout their cancer journey.
Learn more
The Victorian Childhood Cancer Outcomes Registry (VCCOR)
The VCCOR is a database that will provide a clearer and more complete picture of paediatric cancer care in Victoria, by bringing together data that is already routinely collected across multiple sites and systems into one registry.
It is designed to support research and statewide service improvement, with the potential to improve the quality of life and treatments available to future paediatric cancer patients.
Data services
As part of the VICS, PICS can access and use data related to childhood cancer care in Victoria to supports our health service partners with:
- service planning and design
- quality and performance monitoring
- improvement initiatives.
As a statewide service, our data access includes routine, linked extracts from the Victorian Admitted Episode Data (VAED) and the Victorian Cancer Registry (VCR) datasets.
If you work at one of our partner health services and would help with data analysis related to the above, you can submit a data request, or contact us for more information.