Mumbai’s Tata Hospital introduces online tuition for doctors to detect cancer cases earlier

The project is designed to reach doctors working in rural areas and tier-two cities and do not have the time to attend medical conferences.

With the aim of detecting early stages of cancer in patients and making the treatment relatively affordable, doctors at Tata Memorial Hospital, Parel along with the state government, have launched online tutorials for doctors to diagnose and treat cancer.

Early diagnoses are likely to increase survival rates and decrease the cost of treatment. (File photo for representation)

Professor of head and neck surgery at the institute, Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi said that the course is intended for physicians, gynaecologists, dentists, and other health care professionals who are not necessarily cancer specialists. “Through this project, we are trying to reach millions of doctors who are extremely busy working in rural areas and tier-two cities, and may not have the time to attend medical conferences.” He added that early diagnoses are likely to increase survival rates and decrease the cost of treatment.

The course is designed for seven weeks and comprises 14 hours of video lectures, cases studies, assessment questionnaires, and interactive webinars. The learning material is available free of cost at www.omnicuris.com.

Dr Satish Pawar, director, directorate of Health Services, said that state will use the e-learning programme for doctors who will be a part of a month long oral cancer screening programme to be undertaken by the government in December. He said that a total of 8,500 doctors in the government service will benefit from these online tutorials.

While the e-learning programme will be started for doctors in Maharashtra, eventually it will be rolled out across all states as a national programme. Maharashtra reports over one lakh cases of cancer annually and 50% of the patients, who are diagnosed at late stages, die within a year of the diagnosis. currently, over 30 lakh Indians are estimated to be living with some form of cancer.