Can national cancer registration support clinical databases and clinical cancer research?

Can national cancer registration support clinical databases and clinical cancer research? The short answer is: Yes, it can. A longer version is: Yes, it can and if it cannot substantially help now, we will have to make sure that it can in the future. In many countries and regions for decades there has been a mandatory registration of new and incident cancers. In many of these countries and regions there is also a rapidly growing interest in keeping clinical databases for clinical audit and research. The discussion about how to marry these two systems is growing, not least because both are time and resource demanding and it is important to get priorities right.