Cutting Edge: National databank on cancer research will help identify effective treatment protocols

With rising cases of cancer in India, there is a need to digitise the vast medical records which will provide a national databank to facilitate better oncology-related research and accessibility to patients. That’s why the National Cancer Grid (NCG), the network of cancer hospitals that comes under the umbrella of Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), has tied up with the IIT-Bombay-based Koita Centre for Digital Health.
In 2013, the Tata Memorial Hospital, Parel — the biggest cancer hospital in India — became paperless. This has worked as a miracle for cancer patients where digital reports can be accessed at a swipe of a smart card in the hospital’s kiosks. The records are available on password-protected personal online accounts of patients. Taking this forward, the NCG, which has over 270 cancer hospitals under its umbrella, wants to emphasise digital health along with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-supported tools.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) projected that Indians suffering from cancer are projected to increase to 29.8 million in 2025. But only 40 per cent of the essential reports and treatment protocols are digitally accessible in India. So, Koita Centre for Digital Health will come in handy for several healthcare applications like data management, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and tele-medicine among others.
Talking to The Indian Express, Rizwan Koita, director of the NGO, Koita Foundation, which funded the establishment of the centre, said that they would implement best practices in digital health, including AI, machine-learning, big data, automation, cloud and mobile. This will benefit hospitals, doctors and cancer patients. The operations will be driven three objectives — use the exing pool of technology, create a national database and drive research.
Rizwan said before choosing new technologies, the centre would focus on utilising the already exing tools in the market to bear positive results. Embracing digital tools like tele-medicine and remote patient monitoring will make care more accessible, especially in semi-urban and rural areas.
Once the national databank is completed and maps areas that need more research, it will enable tracking and benchmarking of clinical outcomes and effectiveness of different treatment and care pathways. “For instance, a hospital has introduced a new therapy which has helped 10 patients. Now, if we can do the same in other hospitals, we will have 10-15 times more data to gauge the efficiency of the new therapy. This will provide more clinically authentic data,” he said.

AI-assed clinical decision support tools will help improve doctors’ ability to provide better care. Meanwhile, mobile patient engagement apps will help patients with medication management and better compliance to care guidelines. “Before we decide on developing such focussed AI tools, we need to have that data,” he added.
In the next vision, they would collaborate between academic institutions and clinical researchers. “The clinic experience has to come from doctors while the deep analysis and AI expertise will be provided researchers from the Koita Centre for Digital Health. So, we will work as a bridge between the two specialities, which will help develop tools to enhance cancer care and make it more accessible and affordable across India,” he said. “It is the first step towards digital healthcare in cancer,” he added.
Koita Centre for Digital Health has already sponsored several projects of TMC that is already doing research in breast cancer, Hodgkin Lymphoma among others. “The future is digital…with the accessibility of smartphones, we can utilise digital health to provide affordable and quality treatment,” said Dr CS Pramesh, convener of the NCG.