About

NW-SCORE is a unique partnership between the University of Washington (UW) Medicine and community practices and health systems in the Pacific Northwest to aggregate de-identified breast cancer screening and diagnostic clinical and imaging data with the goal of improving population-based cancer outcomes. NW-SCORE obtains exam-level data for women undergoing breast imaging as part of their usual care with the ability to link to long-term cancer outcomes data from state cancer registries. De-identified, aggregated data is curated and managed by the UW Medicine’s Information Technology Services (ITS) team.

Annually, each participating community practice will receive an individualized quality of care report with their own practice screening performance metrics and comparison aggregate performance metrics from all other NW-SCORE practices/facilities combined. By providing aggregate performance data across all collaborators, each practitioner and practice can use the data for quality improvement purposes with anonymized, aggregate regional comparators. In return, the aggregated clinical and imaging data is used for innovating research projects that are meant to further improve outcomes in our communities. NW-SCORE has IRB approval from UW with appropriate data use agreements in place with each partner. All data transfers and management are handled by the UW ITS using extreme data security measures and infrastructure for regional network data management already in place.

Acknowledgements

NW-SCORE is made possible through private foundation funds, NIH-sponsored research grants, and the UW Department of Radiology. We especially acknowledge the Kuni Foundation Innovation Award and Dolsen Family Fund for their early support of NW-SCORE efforts.