Forecasting the Incidence of Cancer in Regional Victoria, Australia

Abstract

Loddon Mallee Integrated Cancer Service plays a key role in planning the delivery of cancer services in the Loddon Mallee Region of Victoria, Australia. Forecasting the incidence of cancer is an important part of planning for these services. This article is written from an industry perspective. We describe the context of our work, review the literature on forecasting the incidence of cancer, discuss contemporary approaches, describe our experience with forecasting models, and list issues associated with applying these models. An extensive bibliography illustrates the world-wide interest in this forecasting problem. We hope that it is useful to researchers.

Keywords:

• Cancer services
• Descriptive epidemiology
• Stochastic models
• Strategic planning

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• Primary 62-02, 62-07, 62P10
• Secondary 62J05, 62P25

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge continued support for our work at LMICS from Department of Health, Victoria. We are continually grateful to Cancer Council Victoria and Victorian Cancer Registry for providing data on the incidence of cancer. We thank the organizers of the conference “Stochastic Modeling Techniques and Data Analysis International Conference” (June 8–11, 2010, Chania, Crete, Greece) for arranging the opportunity to present this work. Finally we thank the reviewers whose comments showed us how to improve this article.