Onco.com, India’s leading digital platform for cancer care, recently received global recognition for its advanced technology platform “Online Cancer Patient Assistance Pathway” (OCPAP™) at the recently held annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in May 2020. A concordance study comparing the treatment guidance provided by the OCPAP™ platform against that provided by a panel of senior oncologists was found to provide the right treatment guidance to patients with very high accuracy. The Study was presented by Dr Amit Jotwani, co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Onco.com.
As per the Global Survey of Clinical Oncology Workforce 2018, for every 10,000 cancer patients, there are only 1 to 5 trained oncologists in developing countries like India. Scarcity of oncologists and lack of accessibility to healthcare are key factors that contribute to the high mortality-incidence ratio of 0.68. In light of these staggering statistics, Onco.com’s concordance study opens up a new possibility of affordable and accessible cancer guidance that could transform the healthcare landscape globally. Integration of the algorithm with care management tools is being assessed in a bid to further improve treatment compliance and outcomes.
Onco.com’s OCPAP™ is an award-winning, unbiased, advanced technology portal built exclusively for cancer patients to guide them during the overwhelming journey through cancer. More than 50,000 users have already used this platform to date and the team continues to serve hundreds of patients on a daily basis.
According to Dr Amit Jotwani, “We studied the accuracy of the guidance provided by this platform by comparing its guidance with that provided by a panel of senior oncologists for 448 cases studied. In this study, we found that OCPAP™ could provide accurate treatment guidance for 93% of patients and this accuracy was consistent across cancer types and different stages of disease. The lowest concordance was recorded at 74% for brain tumors where there is substantive subjectivity among doctors owing to clinical findings and tumour characteristics noted on scans. More than 50,000 users have already used this platform to date and we continue to serve hundreds of patients on a daily basis through OCPAP™”.
Cancer patients struggle to get the right information about their disease and treatment options as there is no online platform that provides personalized guidance for patients. Onco.com’s doctors and engineers have built the world’s first advanced technology platform called OCPAP™ (Online Cancer Patient Assistance Pathway) dedicated to cancer patients. Any patient from any corner of the world can get free access to personalized cancer treatment guidance in simple English language for 15 types of cancers by providing just 4 basic inputs about their condition.
According to Rashie Jain, CEO and Co-founder of Onco.com, “At Onco, we are excited about building technology-aided solutions that can improve cancer care delivery globally. Being recognized at ASCO for our OCPAP™ platform is a significant milestone for us. The platform has allowed us to provide guidance to thousands of cancer patients free of cost – something we are all very proud of. We are looking forward to building many more tech solutions in the future”
The burden of cancer is increasing globally, and in India, an estimated 1.45 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2019 alone. The OCPAP™ platform can prove to be invaluable for the cancer patients and their families, particularly in a developing country like India where lack of access to multidisciplinary cancer care leads to poor outcomes for many patients. Notably, the Onco.com’s team also won the prestigious “ASCO Merit Award” last year at the “Breakthrough Innovations in Cancer Summit 2019” for their work on OCPAP™.
Just in the last 3 month, adoption of Onco’s Online Opinion grew by 53% in Tier-2 and Tier 3 markets and 35% growth in overall traffic to the site from nonTier-1 markets. This is indicative of the Indian patients and care giver community’s acceptance of online consultation which can significantly help them by lowering the burden on having to take multiple trips to the hospital in need of expert second opinions and a clear path of treatment. This is also visible from the 140% increase in digital consultations on Onco.com, which has been happening during the lockdown.
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