GCO (Global Cancer Observatory)

Global Cancer Observatory or GCO is an interactive web platform for displaying global statistics on cancer, for surveillance and research purposes. It uses data from different projects of the Section of Cancer Surveillance of IARC.

It includes projects such as GLOBOCAN, Cancer in 5 Continents, International Incidence of Child Cancer (IICC) and Cancer Survival in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Central America (SurvCan). GCO focuses on visualising cancer data to illustrate changes in scale, epidemiological profile and impact of the disease worldwide. User friendly online tools are available for creation of tables, map and other different types of visual data presentation.

GCO has four sections: Cancer Today, Cancer Tomorrow, Cancer Causes and Cancer over Time. The latter is undergoing development, so it is currently suggested to use CI5 and WHO Mortality databases instead.

They also have a resource list of organisations, projects, software and different content sources on cancer.

Difference with GLOBOCAN 2012 and other databases

Differences between GLOBOCAN 2018 and previous versions of GLOBOCAN relate to the availability of incidence and mortality data and the methods used for rate estimation in the absence of data. Data from GLOBOCAN 2012 and previous version are not available online anymore. Mortality data is based on WHO Mortality database information for earlier periods, on which prediction methods were used to get mortality estimates. The CI5 database is an important source for incidence estimates on national/regional level in GCO, but the rates can differ due to calculation being done for a different time frame or a different set of populations.