Onward Assist: The way forward for cancer diagnosis, treatment and outcome

NSRCEL-incubated Onward Assist is a start-up aimed to build solutions that can help improve cancer treatment outcomes

Early diagnosis/prognosis of a cancer type is critical, but the clinician is expected to look at a huge volume of data. Imaging modalities like Pathology are complicated to report, and time-consuming. There are only 500 cancer pathologists in India, who have the skill to report on a biopsy slide and give an accurate report. But in India, there are about two million cancer patients being reported every year, leading to huge waiting times and sub-optimal outcomes. Moreover, the Founders say that interviewing oncologists made them realize that most diagnostic and prognostic scoring tools are either non-existent for cancer, or the ones which are available for cancer have been built for western populations.