Whenever we go to a doctor or a hospital, they collect data about us, our health and our lifestyle. This is recorded and stored in our patient record. It may include our height and weight, whether we smoke, how much we drink, details of any allergies, what aches, pains or infections we’ve got, and what medications we are taking. National health systems use this information to help provide the best clinical care for us. But health data can also be reused for purposes beyond direct care including to improve health, care and services through research and planning.

Therefore, your data can help you directly, as an individual, to provide you with care, but it can also help other people’s lives by benefiting everyone else. Data from previous cancer patients can help current patients' treatments, while their own data will help refine treatments for future ones. Sharing patient data is therefore an opportunity to fight cancer.

Inaugurated in 2000, World Cancer Day is an opportunity to raise awareness and remind people that we all have a role to play in reducing the global impact of cancer. Without significant action, the World Health Organisation estimates that the European region could reach an incidence of 5.4 million cases of cancer, and nearly 2.5 million deaths per year by 2030.

To mark this occasion, the Healthy Data team has developed an interactive comic book, where users can follow the story of Robert, 50, who has been diagnosed with and treated for colorectal cancer, and suffers from Lynch syndrome, an inherited genetic mutation. Discover Robert's story and how his data can be reused, under what conditions and most importantly how he can get involved in the governance of his health data.

Discover Robert's story!