Who is the VCCC Alliance?

The VCCC Alliance is Australia’s first and most ambitious comprehensive cancer centre: a joint venture of 10 member institutions, integrating cancer research, education and clinical care.

Their members are academic, clinical and medical research institutions that are each leaders in their own right. The alliance brings the strengths of these organisations together, generating a critical mass of expertise, patient numbers and resources, underpinned by a pledge to work collaboratively towards shared goals in cancer control.

Their approach of dynamic, inclusive, system-level collaboration coupled with world-class cancer education and the involvement of consumers, helps to accelerate the translation of scientific evidence into better outcomes for all Victorians affected by cancer.

Data Connect

Data Connect is a major collaboration between the VCCC Alliance, the University of Melbourne, hospitals and BioGrid Australia, that has enabled the linking of primary care and hospital data for the first time in Australia.

Their team of experts provide advice and support to researchers planning a cancer research project, to help them access and analyse the data. The capability of this resource is particularly suited to research examining cancer across the patient’s whole journey – from pre-diagnosis to diagnosis and treatment, to post-treatment including survivorship and palliative care.

The team can:

• Help researchers test the feasibility of their research question, assessing if there is sufficient primary care data that can be linked to hospital data
• Provide information about the process to apply for linked data, the costs, and the governance and ethics requirements
• Collaborate to progress cancer research with linked data.