National Cancer Grid establishes new centre for Digital Oncology to improve cancer care using digital technologies

way2barak, Aug. 26: The National Cancer Grid (NCG) has established the Koita Centre for Digital Oncology (KCDO) to promote use of digital technologies and tools to improve cancer care across India. The Centre has been set up with the contributions received from the Koita Foundation, which will support it for five years. The Tata Memorial Centre and Koita Foundation formalized the collaboration by signing an MoU at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai today.

Cancer care is evolving rapidly, and digital tools are becoming indispensable in enhancing cancer care worldwide. KCDO will play an important role in driving digital transformation across the cancer care continuum. KCDO will support NCG  hospitals in sharing best practices in digital health, adopting digital health tools, and driving many common technology initiatives including EMR adoption, healthcare data interoperability, reporting and analytics.

KCDO will also enable NCG and NCG hospitals pilot and adopt new technologies – including AI, machine learning, big data, automation, cloud, mobile – which will benefit hospitals, doctors, patients and consumers. Embracing digital tools like tele-medicine and remote patient monitoring will help make care more accessible especially in semi-urban and rural areas. AI-assisted clinical decision support tools will help improve doctors’ ability to provide better care, and mobile patient  engagement apps will help patients with medication management and better compliance with care guidelines. Similarly, use of healthcare data analytics across hospitals will enable tracking and benchmarking of clinical outcomes and effectiveness of different treatment and care pathways. KCDO will also partner with academic and research organizations to promote research and development in cancer care.

“The Koita Centre for Digital Oncology is a very timely initiative. It will help  create an innovation ecosystem across hospitals, healthcare technology companies, academic institutions and research organizations to address challenges in cancer care. The positive impact of this ecosystem can extend  beyond cancer care”, said Dr. R A Badwe, Director, Tata Memorial Centre.

“We are very excited about the establishment of Koita Centre for Digital Oncology in NCG. The new centre will enable more than 270 NCG partner hospitals to assess and deploy digital tools to enhance cancer care and make it more accessible and affordable across India”, said Dr. C S Pramesh, Convener of the NCG.

“Koita Foundation is privileged to partner with the NCG and supports its Digital Health initiatives and drive meaningful improvement in cancer care across India. KCDO can also help NCG hospitals adopt the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) platform, which is a key national priority,” said Rizwan Koita, Director, Koita Foundation.

About National Cancer Grid (NCG): 

The National Cancer Grid (NCG) is an initiative of the Government of India through the Department of Atomic Energy and its grant-in-aid institution, the Tata Memorial Centre, to create a network of cancer centres, research institutes, patient groups and charitable institutions across India with the objective of developing uniform standards of patient care for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer; providing specialized training and education in oncology and facilitating collaborative basic, translational and clinical research in cancer. NCG today has over 270 hospitals in its network across India.

About Koita Foundation:

Koita Foundation (www.koitafoundation.org) is a not-for-profit organization that  has two focus areas – NGO Transformation and Digital Health. As part of Koita Foundation Digital Health initiatives, it has partnered with IIT Bombay to establish the Koita Centre for Digital Health (www.kcdh.iitb.ac.in) and works closely with National Health Authority (NHA) and National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) on their Digital Health initiatives.