Telstra Health has won the hotly contested tender to build and operate the $178.3 million National Cancer Screening Register (NCSR), which will replace the current state-based registers for cervical cancer screening programs and the national bowel cancer screening register, to go live in time for the introduction of the new human papillomavirus (HPV) testing regime that will replace Pap smears from May 2017.

The federal government allocated $148.8 million to the measure in the 2014-2015 budget and topped that up to $178.3 million over five years in the 2015-16 budget. A tender was issued last year.