Online opinions from Mumbai’s Tata hospital help cancer patients seek better treatment
Navya was started in 2015 to bridge the gap between cancer patients and specialists inIndia
Doctors from Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Parel, recently presented a new research paper at a leading conference in the United States.
The paper focuses on how the hospital’s initiative of giving expert opinion to cancer patients, through an online platform called Navya, has helped 13,600 (80%) of 17,000 patients avail better treatment in the past three years.
The online opinion is given by a team of specialists from the TMH.
Navya was started in 2015 to bridge the gap between cancer patients and specialists in
India.
As per data provided by the hospital, India has only 1,600 oncologists for three million cancer patients, thus indicating that a large number of cancer patients may not have access to treatment at all.
Speaking about the online initiative, doctors said the system works with the help of two separate engines — Evidence Engine and Experience Engine.
While the former holds a vast database of oncological clinical trials, the latter stores past cases, histories and line of treatment offered by experts from the hospital.
“When a patient’s record is uploaded into the system, it gives a structured analysis of the case history and evaluates the best line of treatment,” said Gitika Srivastava, founder of Navya.
About 85% of patients were given opinions for free, said Dr Rajendra Badwe, director, TMH.
“The findings of the study reveal that Navya model works very well for providing affordable, standard of care treatment to patients who don’t have access to cancer specialists,” he added.
The findings were presented at the San Antonio Breast
Cancer Symposium, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on December 12.