Convenience matters, as does commitment to access.  Access to expert cancer care.

Three things compelled me to write this today.  One, each time I think of decision making in cancer care, be it for a cancer patient or his or her family, or an oncologist, I fall back to the basics of evidence (applicable clinical trials), experience (treating thousands of complex or rare cases), and experts (true experts, of which there are only a handful, do not be fooled).  Boil this down further, and you are left to the ability to identify and use the few really applicable high quality clinical trials (evidence) and consult the experts at tertiary care cancer centers (true experts), especially for nuanced decision making (experience treating the uncommon).  Why then is there the talk of digesting millions of records when only a few trials are high quality and it is the applicability that matters, not the large volumes of any and all data?  (I don’t understand, and hence I write…) When there are only a handful of true experts and only their experience matters, then why are we spinning our wheels on doing anything but increasing access to their expertise?  (Beats me, when there’s blatant publicity on hospitals without any bearings to whether it’s a peer-recognized world class institute…)

This brings me to my point #2.  I’ve been helping a friend of a friend get a pathology review from a leading hospital, for her sister’s rare tumor.  I am a sister.  I know her fight and will fight with her.  Despite my fantastic everything, this person was stuck in the logistics of figuring out how to send a sample, to whom, how, packaging difficulties, courier challenges, unclear billing instructions, completing online forms, invoking treating doctors for telecommunications, and most importantly finding a person on the other end to just talk to and make this work!  Wait, wait, wait — is what she got at each instance, and if you’ve ever waited for a month to just send a sample and expect to wait a month to receive a report, you know what I mean (especially if the cancer-word is in play).

Why are we spinning our wheels on doing anything but increasing access to their expertise?

So, my third point:  operations matters.  A one day turnaround that my analysts strive to deliver, using simple and powerful tools to expedite the opinion of true experts (handful in the world, in India, in the US, in the world…), really matters.   Leveraging only the applicable clinical trials and the nuanced machine learning from expert opinions on complex cases, is all that is needed to make intelligent decisions.  The commitment to make this available to you – really matters.

We offer that, because we want to, because we know what it feels like to want it and not have it – but need it; and because we have worked really hard to use teamwork, clinical informatics and machine learning, and relevant high quality data, to deliver it.  When we work with only the true experts, we know that no other service can do what we do, and it is our duty to bring true expertise to everyone, conveniently and quickly.   And hence, I confidently ask that everyone in need of an expert opinion, an expert treatment decision in cancer care, please reach out to Navya online.  8,000 patients from 42 countries, are testimony to our commitment to convenience and access to expert cancer care.

-Gitika Srivastava

Online Expert Opinion: navyanetwork.com/tmh

Tata Trusts: tatatrusts.org

Tata Memorial Center: tmc.gov.in

Navya: navyanetwork.com