There is a distinct lack of online atlases to visualize and explore cancer incidence in Middle Eastern countries despite the clear benefit that such tools can deliver. This paper describes the development and implementation of a cancer Atlas of Saudi Arabia, which is a web-based client-server application with built-in analysis functions for analyzing patterns of cancer incidence. Built using ESRI’s ArcGIS Server API and ASP.NET, the atlas contains 45,532 incidences of cancer for the period from 1998 to 2004, which were provided by the Saudi Arabian National Cancer Registry. This tool is aimed at health care practitioners and researchers, who can use this tool for exploring cancer distribution and investigating trends, and as a decision support tool for service allocation. The tool allows users to map cancer incidence and undertake analyses at four spatial scales from city to national level.
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