Smart-Colpo: What if we had a national program for cervical cancer led by industry players and start-ups?

Abstract

Carcinoma cervix is one of the leading causes of death among females worldwide. WHO has put forth the 90–70–90 global strategy for elimination of cervical cancer. It calls for 70% women to be screened at least once in their lifetime. This is as low as 1.9% for India and even lower for many other countries. Studying patient journeys, process mapping and counterfactual analysis helped to better understand the problem. Weaknesses of our system include availability, accessibility, affordability, skewed distribution of infrastructure, cost implications and limited specialist manpower. The strengths of our system are the key change drivers like existing network of primary healthcare workers, changes in health seeking behavior due to COVID-19 with increasing role of tele-health, conducive political milieu with initiatives like Digital India Mission and booming start-up ecosystem. On connecting the dots, what we need is a solution that is inexpensive, socially acceptable, does not require women to visit health centers, does not require additional government budgetary allocation and something that the industry/start-ups would be keen on taking up. An artificial intelligence-based solution like “Smart-Colpo” can be a good fit. It can be a potential “Loss-Leader” for industry players, helping them build network, acquire potential customers in rural India and usher in data-driven revenue models and cross-subsidization. Therefore, making it India’s first industry-led health program.