The National Oncology rapid Ascertainment Hub (NOAH) is a specialized software application developed by the CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) to modernize cancer data surveillance. Built on the foundation of eMaRC Lite/Plus, NOAH streamlines the management of cancer data for central cancer registries. Its primary function is to quickly and efficiently identify reportable cancer cases within pathology reports, particularly focusing on childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancers as part of the Childhood Cancer STAR Project.
NOAH utilizes a base NPCR Natural Language Processing (NLP) model to automatically determine key data elements like reportability, histology, primary site, behavior, and laterality from unstructured text. It enhances this process with a Negation Terms Finder (NegEx) to improve text mining accuracy. The application can also train registry-specific NLP models for better customization and performance.
Key Capabilities:
- Data Import & Transformation: Imports files in standard formats (HL7 2.3.1, HL7 2.5.1, NAACCR pipe-delimited) and transforms NAACCR files to NAACCR HL7 2.5.1 messages.
- Automated Coding: Uses NLP to auto-code reportability, histology, primary site, behavior, and laterality, including conditional terms to improve site coding.
- Quality Control: Flags reports with impossible histology and primary site combinations (via Cancer PathCHART) and identifies metastatic cancers when clearly noted.
- Deployment Flexibility: Can be implemented locally or used as an Application Programming Interface (API).
- User Interface: Provides a user interface to view pathology reports side-by-side with auto-coded results for verification.
NOAH is provided as part of the Registry Plus suite of publicly available software programs, making it a free resource for its target users: central cancer registries and public health partners.