The Ontario Cancer Data Linkage Program called – cd-link – is an initiative of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the Cancer Care Ontario Health Services Research Program. Through a collaborative agreement between the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and Cancer
Care Ontario (CCO), cd-link is a data release program whereby cancer data is de-identified and made directly accessible to health services researchers.
The cd-link program was established in 2010 under the guidance of Dr. Craig Earle, Director, Health Services Research Program, Cancer Care Ontario and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, whose vision was to make ICES cancer data directly available to healthcare researchers. In order to put the cd-link plan into effect, Earle needed to establish a way of safeguarding and de-identifying patient-level information in accordance with Ontario (PHIPA) and US (HIPAA) privacy legislation.