17,000 sought 2nd opinion from Tata Memorial Hospital in 3 years

MUMBAI: A

second opinion

service offered by the

Tata Memorial Hospital-promoted Navya Online

has won recognition for offering ‘tailor-made’, ‘standardized’ and ‘most affordable’ options for patients, at the recent San Antonio Breast

Cancer

Symposium in the US.

Around 17,000 patients sought a second opinion from Tata Memorial Hospital’s

doctors

through Navya over the last three years. “Almost 90% of the patients were provided the service free of cost,’’ said hospital director Dr Rajendra Badwe. He said an analysis of opinions showed over that most decisions were congruent with treatment plans laid down by US-based National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). NCCN is a not-for-profit network of 27 leading cancer centres that works on improving quality of cancer care.

In most of the world, patients fail to get evidence-based treatment plans. “Patients also don’t have adequate financial resources and are unable to afford or access therapies that are recommended as best-suited for patients,’’ said Dr Badwe. India has only 1,600 oncologists for three million patients. Under such circumstances, the Navya search engine gave most patients ‘optimal’ care at affordable prices recommended across the world. The finding that Navya’s recommendations are tailored to patient resource constraints enhances the impact of

online

opinion, said the doctor. The study showed that only 8.6% of NCCN guidelines could be mapped directly to patient care in India; 79.7% required tailoring for resource constraints.


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