Continuous monitoring of cancer burden indicators, such as mortality, incidence and prevalence, is important to evaluate progresses and define new cancer control programs. Usually only mortality data are systematically available from official statistics both at local and national scale. Incidence data are collected by population based Cancer Registries and, with some exceptions, they cover only a fraction of the national population. MIAMOD and PIAMOD are statistical methods, developed by researchers from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy) to estimate and project cancer incidence and prevalence both at regional and national level.

MIAMOD method
The MIAMOD method (Mortality and Incidence Analysis MODel) has been first proposed (references).
It involves modelling incidence as an age, period and cohort (APC) function and back-calculating its parameters from cancer mortality and survival. Both observed data and model-based survival estimates can be used. Based on APC estimated parameters, incidence is projected into past and future years. Prevalence is derived from estimated and projected incidence by convolution of cancer incidence and survival over time. In the last fifteen years several papers presenting MIAMOD applications to the most relevant cancer sites (breast, lung, colorectal, stomach, cervix uteri, skin melanoma, prostate) were published (references)

PIAMOD method
The PIAMOD (Prevalence and Incidence Analysis MODel) method is an alternative to MIAMOD for estimating and projecting prevalence when incidence data are available, i.e. on the areas covered by cancer registration (references). In PIAMOD observed incidence is directly modelled as an APC model. Prevalence is derived, as in MIAMOD method, from the convolution of cancer incidence and survival over time.

MIAMOD/PIAMOD software
Both methods are available in a software ad hoc developed in consultation with the Surveillance Research Program of the Division of Cancer and Population Sciences (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda USA). The software is distributed free of charge and provides a user-friendly interface to run both MIAMOD and PIAMOD programs on PC workstations under Windows Operating Systems.
To receive a copy of MIAMOD/PIAMOD software please contact the following address: roberta.deangelis@iss.it

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Courses on MIAMOD/PIAMOD methods & software
The introductory course on MIAMOD/PIAMOD software is addressed to epidemiologist and statisticians dealing with population-based Cancer Registries data. The aims of the course are :

• to give a general overview of the statistical methods for estimating cancer morbidity implemented by the MIAMOD/PIAMOD software
• to introduce methods and programs for cancer survival modelling
• to enable participants to produce incidence and prevalence estimates by using the MIAMOD/PIAMOD software

 

The past editions of the course were held in: 

 

2009 Tehran (Iran) Cancer Research Center, 25- 27 April 2009 (Program 2009)

2008 Rome (Italy), Istituto Superiore di Sanità, 26-28 November (Brochure Rome 2008) 

2008 Granada (Spain), Esculea Andaluza de Salud Publica, 24-26 September

(Brochure Granada 2008)

2007 Rome (Italy), Istituto Superiore di Sanità, March 7-9 2007 (Program 2007)
2006 Locarno (Switzerland), Registro Tumori del Canton Ticino, March 8-10 (Program 2006)
2005 Rome (Italy), Istituto Superiore di Sanità, October 19-21 (Program 2005)

Contacting the authors

All correspondence concerning the software should be addressed to :

 

• Dr. Roberta De Angelis
  Istituto Superiore di Sanità
  Centro Nazionale di Epidemiologia
  Sorveglianza e Promozione della Salute
  Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Roma
  Tel. +39.06.49904289
  Fax +39.06.49904285
  e-mail: roberta.deangelis@iss.it

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