Cancer Basemap and Cancer InFocus

Cancer InFocus (CIFTools, University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center) is the de facto standard tool NCI-designated centers already use to describe their catchments — covering every designated center, with 35 licensed adopters as of October 2024 and an active community around the CARDS group and the Catchment Area Data Conference. Cancer Basemap is not trying to replace it.

Upstream, not a competitor

Cancer InFocus gathers county-level data and produces standardized files and a Shiny app for a center’s catchment; that’s a strength this project doesn’t try to duplicate. What Cancer Basemap adds is what a snapshot-file tool structurally can’t do on its own: every release stays queryable, joins across sources happen in SQL rather than by hand, and the whole thing is reachable from R, Python, SQL, a browser, or an assistant — not only through one application.

The intended relationship: Cancer InFocus (or ECCO, or any center’s own tool) reads from Cancer Basemap, the same way a downstream consumer reads from any published dataset. A recipe that writes CIFTools-shaped files for a chosen catchment is a better path to adoption than a rival dashboard, and the CARDS group is the audience this needs to reach before that recipe ships (SPEC.md § Recipes lists it as recipe 4, and open questions call out approaching the CIF team directly before milestone M2 closes).

What Cancer Basemap cannot carry

Cancer InFocus’s own county-level cancer incidence comes from the USCS Incidence Analytic Dataset through special access — a bilateral or Research-Data-Center arrangement between the requester and CDC/NCI, not a public redistribution licence. A public dataset structurally cannot republish that: the licence gate rules out anything that isn’t redistributable by a third party, and special-access USCS incidence fails that test regardless of how the data would otherwise be used. What Cancer Basemap carries instead is State Cancer Profiles’ own published county incidence and mortality rates — the same public route SCP itself uses, and the one Cancer Basemap keeps at every vintage rather than only the latest.

The ACR (American College of Radiology) Lung Cancer Screening Registry facility locator is very likely proprietary and is not being pursued as a source (SPEC.md’s own licence-gate table).

No Cancer InFocus data values, coverage figures, or comparisons appear on this site — anything about what CIF itself contains belongs to CIF and its own documentation, not here.