General guidance and process for submissions

This section provides additional guidance for data items in the ETOS.

A rolling month submission window will be made available for the Lung Cancer Screening Data Set (LCSDS). Data submissions are required each month containing activity data for the preceding month (for example in the August submission window you would submit activity data for July). If no activity occurred, there will be an option to report no activity. Providers will have the opportunity to re-submit data for previous months.

The resubmission of data is optional, and we anticipate providers will use this process only in exceptional circumstances. There is no need to resubmit data unless the resubmitted data are considered to be of higher quality than the original submission or if the data being resubmitted has a knock-on effect on other data (for example, where a change to April’s submission impacts the May and June submissions, then all three months should be resubmitted).

Detailed guidance will be provided on the LCSDS webpages which are still in development.

The File-level Rejects tab outlines the most commonly occurring error codes and associated validation failure messages. Rejection messages can be looked up within this tab to try to ascertain the reason for the error message.

A common error code is LCSREJ01, which indicates a failed submission file format check. This usually means that the file which has been uploaded has failed format checks and the submission has been rejected.

Please refer to the ‘File Level Rejects’ tab within the Enhanced Technical Output Specification (ETOS) for further details.

Valid timestamp formats are provided in the technical glossary tab in the ETOS.

The timestamp fields should always show the time ‘as shown on the clock’. For example, a submitted value of ‘2021-05-31T23:30:00+01:00’ is showing that the time when an activity took place was 23:30, during part of the year when British Summer Time applies.

The only valid offset times (at least for activity taking place in this country, which it all should be for LCSDS) are ‘+01:00’, ‘+00:00’ or ‘-00:00’ (or a ‘Z’).

The following principles should be applied:

The time zone offset should be factored into any date comparison validations, such as to check whether a timestamp is after the end of the reporting period. Dates should not need to be converted back to GMT however, some logic may need to be developed to handle comparisons between timestamps and reporting periods that fall on the day that the clocks change.

Offset times other than ‘+01:00’, ‘+00:00’ or ‘-00:00’ (or ‘Z’) should be rejected, and inappropriate offset times (for example ‘+00:00’ when British Summer Time applies) should also be rejected a new validation message may be needed to handle this.

Examples of valid formats are:

2020-08-21T10:15:20+01:00 British Summer Time (GMT + 1 Hour)

2020-08-21T10:15:20+00:00 Greenwich Mean Time

2020-08-21T10:15:20-00:00 Greenwich Mean Time

2020-08-21T09:18:00Z Greenwich Mean Time.

SNOMED CT codes

SNOMED-CT validations will apply to each SNOMED CT field within the data set. Further information can be found within the Technical Glossary and Assessment Scales tabs within the ETOS.

In the ETOS, there are currently two assessment scales listed within the ‘Assessment Scales’ tab, with associated SNOMED CT codes as follows:

The LLP and PLCO risk scores are calculated at the Lung Health Check appointment to determine a person’s risk of developing lung cancer. Entering the participant’s answers into the risk calculator will generate a score. A score of 2.5% or over on the LLP and 1.51% or over on the PLCO means the person is considered ‘high risk’ and eligible for a CT scan.

Further information can be found within the Assessment Scales tab within the ETOS which can be found on the LCSDS.