The Department of Atomic Energy, vide press release dated 26th August 2022, has notified about the Koita Centre for Digital Oncology (KCDO)established by the National Cancer Grid (NCG) to promote use of digital technologies and tools to improve cancer care across India. 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.
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.
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.
