AI-Powered cancer care platform 'iOncology.ai' showcased at 'Digital India Ask Our Experts'
New Delhi, May 28
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing have jointly developed 'iOncology.ai', an indigenous AI-powered oncology platform designed to support early detection, diagnosis and treatment planning for breast and ovarian cancers in India.
According to a release, the platform was showcased during the latest episode of Digital India Ask Experts, a live interactive programme streamed on Digital India's YouTube channel.
iOncology.ai has been developed as an India-centric solution aimed at assisting clinicians, pathologists and radiologists through AI-driven data insights to enable faster and evidence-based clinical decisions, the release stated.
The episode featured Lakshmi Panat, Program Director, AI & Quantum Technology Group and Technology Director for AI at C-DAC; Prof Ashok Sharma from the Department of Biochemistry and Professor in-charge of Neurobiochemistry at AIIMS New Delhi; and Dr Fouzia Siraj, Scientist E and Head of Pathology at the ICMR-Centre for Cancer Pathology, New Delhi.
The experts discussed how indigenous digital innovations are helping transform healthcare delivery and advance precision-based cancer care in the country.
According to the release, the platform has been integrated with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) ecosystem, bringing patient data into a secure unified dashboard with role-based access for healthcare professionals.
The experts highlighted that the platform aims to address increasing pressure on healthcare systems caused by rising patient loads, delayed diagnosis and limited medical resources by streamlining diagnosis support and improving access to clinical insights.
The release stated that close collaboration between oncologists, doctors, pathologists and AI technologists played a key role in building clinically relevant AI models trained on annotated Indian medical datasets.
The programme also highlighted features such as telepathology, which can help improve healthcare access in remote and smaller districts by enabling specialists to support diagnosis and consultations digitally.
According to the release, the future roadmap for iOncology.ai includes work on "digital twin" technology to create software-based patient models for studying treatment responses, along with integration of multi-omics data to enable more personalised cancer care.
The experts also stressed the importance of early cancer detection and advised citizens against relying on self-medication or generic AI tools for healthcare-related decisions without consulting qualified medical professionals.
— ANI
Reader Comments
Interesting tech, but I'm skeptical about the 'digital twin' part. How can we trust an AI model to simulate a patient's response to treatment? Also, the article mentions 'trained on annotated Indian medical datasets' — but are those datasets large and diverse enough to cover our diverse population? We need transparency on data quality. However, I appreciate the effort to make cancer care more accessible. Let's hope this is done with proper ethical oversight.
Finally, a 'Make in India' solution for healthcare! My mother was treated for ovarian cancer at a small city hospital where we had to send slides to Bangalore for a second opinion. If iOncology.ai can enable telepathology consultations, that would save families like ours time and money. The future with digital twins sounds ambitious — I hope they also focus on affordability for common people. Beautiful to see Indian scientists collaborating! 🚀
As a researcher in AI for healthcare, I'm impressed by the integration of telepathology and ABDM. India's approach to using digital public goods for healthcare is something other developing nations can learn from. One concern: the article says 'role-based access' for patient data. How are they handling consent and data sovereignty? That's critical for trust. But overall, this is a solid step toward precision oncology in a resource-constrained setting.
This is great news for Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. But let's not forget: AI is only as good as the data it's trained on. Indian cancers have different biological patterns compared to Western populations. I'm glad they're using Indian datasets, but we need continuous validation and updates. Also, the warning against 'generic AI tools' is spot on — many people use ChatGPT for medical advice these days. Big thumbs up to the team for addressing this!
We welcome thoughtful discussions from our readers. Please keep comments respectful and on-topic.