The National Cancer Grid (NCG) was created to form a union of cancer centres in India which could provide uniform and high standards of cancer care, follow uniform evidence-based guidelines for management of patients, develop human resource adequately trained to fulfill the cancer healthcare needs of the entire nation, and conduct collaborative clinical research of a high standard.
The union would help to ensure provision of same quality of care to patients from any part of the country, without having to travel long distances and regardless of their ability to pay for treatment achieved by following the same evidence-based management guidelines, which are implementable in all cancer centres.
Aims and Objectives
- Evolve and implement uniform standard of cancer care across India.
- Offer state-of-the-art services for those afflicted by cancer.
- Create human resources to tackle the rising need for cancer care.
- Gauge the magnitude trend and type of national cancer problem through registry and run appropriate epidemiological intervention studies to prevent cancer.
- Direct cancer research in clinic and laboratory to offer cost effective solution to cancer in India.
Dr. C. S. Pramesh
Convener of National Cancer Grid
NCG Milestones
- Has evolved to reach 300 + NCG members centres across the country in ten years.
- Provides treatment to around two-thirds of all cancer cases in India.
- Conducts Virtual Tumor Board sessions twice a week across NCG member centres for multi-disciplinary care in oncology
- Developed NCG Guidelines Manual which provides comprehensive framework on the formulation of de-novo guidelines as well as adaptation and contextualization of other established guidelines.
- Initiated the Quality Improvement Methodology, NCG QI Hub - EQuiP (Enable Quality, Improve Patient care), Project ECHO in collaboration with Stanford University.
- Started the NCGEQAS program which aims to standardize histopathology and oncopathology practices across the country.
- Started NCG Library: Akshara-NCG discovery tool allows searching of more than 17000 biomedical journals.
- Launched the E- learning portal in 2019 and successfully runs 18 courses.
- Established Clinical Trial Network in oncology under the NCG with the grant from Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, (BIRAC) to strengthen the clinical trial capacity across member centres to promote multi-centric high-quality trials.
- Launched the NCG Koita Centre of Digital Oncology (NCG-KCDO) with the goal of helping its 300+ member centres in the country to adopt and promote digital tools and technologies
- Leveraged collated volume to negotiate for equipment, drugs and other consumables.