Under funding from the National Cancer Institute, all of the INPC participants, as well as two new participants (the Indiana State Department of Public Health and their Indiana State Cancer Registry) have agreed to participate in the Indianapolis Pathology Informatics Network (IPIN).  The hospital participants will add surgical pathology reports, inpatient pharmacy data, discharge summaries and radiology reports to the data they already provide to IPIN for cancer research purposes. The public health department will contribute de-identified cancer registry data. Many of the hospitals are willing to make this data available for treatment purposes, as long as it is well protected.

This NCI project will provide a link from clinical data and outcomes (phenotype) to tissue specimens (genotype), as paraffin blocks in pathology departments. This evolving citywide and population-based medical record database provides extraordinary opportunities for epidemiology i.e., clinical and public health research.  This project raises many interesting challenges regarding the linking of de-identified records