Merel Kramer

Palga Foundation

The nationwide network and registry of histo- and cytopathology in the Netherlands In the Netherlands, since 1971 a foundation (PALGA) has been active, which has developed a system of central archiving of all reports generated by all (55) Pathology departments (academic and non-academic) in the country. PALGA •an acronym, litterally translated: pathological anatomy national automated archive. •a non-profit foundation, members are all Pathology departments. •a system developed by pathologists. •a system for pathologists and their departments. Contents national database •abstracts of the pathology reports; an abstract consists of •encrypted patient identification, •a summary of the report •diagnostic terms in line with SNOMED terminology. •about 62 million abstracts of more than 11 million patients are stored. •each year more than 2 million abstracts are added. PALGA offers pathology laboratories a package for synoptic reporting. A growing number of reports in the database will therefore be structured. At the end of 2015 30 oncological resections or more can be reported with this package. This is a boost for the quality of the data in the PALGA database. National health care projects PALGA facilitates several national health care projects, e.g.: Dutch Cancer registration, Cervical, Breast Cancer and Coloncancer Screening Programs, Health Care Evaluation and Epidemiological Research Surveys.