theMDT.online

Hippomed is working to solve the specific problem of access to quality cancer care for women with breast cancer in low and middle income countries, starting in East Africa.

Breast cancer is now the most common cancer globally according to WHO (2021). Cancer rates continue to rise, with the majority of cancers occurring in low and middle income countries. New cases are expected to increase by approximately 70% over the next twenty years. In sub-Saharan Africa, essential specialist resources for timely and effective cancer care are scarce, and only 53% of women diagnosed with breast cancer live beyond five years compared with almost 90% in the United States. This statistic may significantly overstate the actual survival rate as it only counts women who have been diagnosed. 

In Kenya, where we work today, cancer is the 3rd leading cause of death for all people after infectious and cardiovascular diseases. For Kenyan women, breast and cervical cancer are the leading causes of mortality. Statistics for 2020 show 6,799 new breast cancer cases in Kenya (GLOBOCAN 2020). However, we estimate the actual figure to be significantly higher due to a lack of screening programs and trained health workers as well as unreliable data collection. In comparison with South Africa (population 59 million), 15,491 new breast cancer cases were recorded by GLOBOCAN in 2020. Using these figures, we can estimate that new breast cancer incidence in Kenya with a population of 54 million could be more than 14,000. In comparison with the USA (population 330 million) 253,500 new breast cancer cases were recorded by GLOBOCAN in 2020. Using these figures, we might estimate that new breast cancer incidence in Kenya could be closer to 40,000, triple the reported statistics. Under these assumptions, the actual 5-year survival rate could be lower than 20%. 

According to the Ministry of Health Kenya Cancer Policy 2019-2030, cancer registration and surveillance in Kenya has been inadequate, largely relying on GLOBOCAN estimates to inform policy and planning.

Critical dimensions of the problem:

1. Time: the majority of Kenyan women affected by breast cancer are diagnosed late, only gaining access to treatment at stage 3, or at stage 4 which is often terminal. Time lost through lack of screening and early intervention has a major impact on survival rates. 

2. Specialist skills: There is an acute skills gap at all levels of cancer care in East Africa. Only 1% of eligible women in Kenya in 2018-19 were screened for breast cancer using mammography due to a lack of qualified radiology personnel, despite the availability of mammography equipment in county referral hospitals.

There are currently only 15 registered radiation oncologists in Kenya. International guidelines (IAEA, 2008) recommend 1 radiation oncologist per 250 cancer patients. Kenya has approximately 48,000 new cases of all cancers every year. Accordingly, Kenya would need 192 radiation oncologists vs. the current 15 (Cancer Care Policy 2020, Ministry of Health, Kenya). 

3. Cost: In Kenya, most women have little or no access to health insurance which discourages them from seeking treatment until too late. After a diagnosis, waste, inefficiency, and lack of adherence to standardized guidelines incur high and unnecessary costs for patients and their families. The resulting lost time, financial burden, anxiety, fear, and substandard care all combine to increase cost and decrease 5-year survival rates. Very often, diagnostics begin with the most expensive tools, e.g., PET scans which may not be relevant for all cases. Treatment begins without proper histopathology, leading to inappropriate interventions, frequently a mastectomy, and additional costs. The costs of managing a breast cancer case diagnosed at the most advanced (metastatic) stage are over twice those of a case detected at early stages, and the chances of 5-year survival are four times lower (H. Blumen et al., Comparison of treatment costs for breast cancer, by tumor stage and type of service, Am. Health Drug Benefits 9 (1) (2016) 23–32). 

4. Data: According to the Ministry of Health Kenya Cancer Policy 2019-2030, cancer registration and surveillance in Kenya is inadequate to inform policy and planning, with the country largely relying on GLOBOCAN estimates. Two regional, population-based cancer registries in Nairobi and Eldoret cover only an estimated 10% of Kenya’s population.

Time, specialized skills, cost and data are all binding constraints on the specific problem of access to quality breast cancer care in the local system.

OVERALL IMPACT GOAL: Increase women’s 5-year survival rates from breast cancer in Kenya to over 90%.

Voices of theMDT.online network:

“As a nurse, I use theMDT.online to find out where my patient’s case has reached. I am the one who reaches out to her to check how she’s feeling. Sometimes I have to remind her to come for treatment, and sometimes she has questions for me. I also check to see if we are on schedule with the course of her treatment. If a step of the process is delayed, I know who to talk to in the MDT.”

Ms. Magdalene Jonah, Breast Care Nurse

“As the only surgeon in my county of Tana River that is a hardship area with limited skilled personnel, I rely on theMDT.online to connect with capabilities and resources that I need and my patients need for their survival. With theMDT.online, I am part of a living, learning network. We need this platform in our government facilities as it will bridge the gaps in skilled personnel, knowing when and where to refer the patient, and better outcomes for our patients. Importantly, it helps us as surgeons to be safe in our practice. The women in this community can, for the first time in history, get quality cancer care.”

Dr. Mohamed Ali Abdalla Billel, Surgeon, Hola County Referral Hospital, Tana River

“theMDT.online brings brilliant minds into one platform to optimise treatment for cancer patients. Improving 5-year survival rates in our context is only achievable through a multisectoral approach and best use of technology. Through this knowledge system, practising oncologists share their expertise to reach consensus for the best outcomes of therapy. theMDT.online is an easily accessible and user-friendly platform—it’s transformational for patient care.”  

Dr. Vijay Narayanan, MBBS, MD (Onco), MA, MPhil (Psycho), PG Dip (Pall Care), Senior  Oncologist, Jalaram Medical Centre, Nairobi

Multidisciplinary Teams (MDTs), also known as “tumor boards,” play a vital role in quality cancer care and are considered the gold standard for clinical decision making in diagnosis and treatment. In MDT meetings, a group of specialists consisting of medical, nursing and allied professionals regularly discuss their patients to cooperatively decide on the most beneficial course of treatment tailored to individual patient needs. More than 20 years of research have proven that clinical pathways that follow MDT recommendations ensure consistently better outcomes for patients. A study of 13,700 breast cancer patients in Scotland, for example, showed that breast cancer mortality was 18% lower in hospitals which had introduced MDTs. 

theMDT.online is a knowledge system implemented in cloud software for professional collaboration in cancer care, opening for everyone, everywhere the proven power of multidisciplinary medical teams to improve women’s survival rates in breast cancer care. 

theMDT.online solves the critical problems of access to quality cancer care in Kenya:

1. Access to specialist care

Training of new specialist clinicians takes years.
theMDT.online solves the problem of poor access to specialists by connecting medics  working in both government and private organisations. The solution facilitates multidisciplinary team discussion of cancer patients through a time-saving and user-friendly interface, leveraging clinicians throughout Kenya to review patient records and recommend a course of treatment. Through the secure theMDT.online platform, clinicians can exchange information and experience in order to recommend the best possible treatment option for an individual patient. Each participant can add their comments in real-time, either in combination with a teleconferencing system, or asynchronously dropping in and out of the continuing discussion surrounding the given patient. It is easily accessed through any device and makes the most efficient use of clinicians’ valuable time. Collaboration on theMDT.online increases the number of patients who have access to the few trained clinicians within Kenya and importantly gives access to international expertise.

In addition, theMDT.online is a valuable training tool for junior doctors in diagnostic methods and treatment of cancer. 7 medical officers at the beginning of their career and 5 junior oncologists are currently on the platform. It enables medics to consult with experienced specialists in the fields they require to improve patient outcomes on a global scale, while breaking down barriers to specialist medical education.

2. Reduction in inefficiency and costs 

theMDT.online promotes a rules-based workflow where best practice guidelines are followed, ensuring standardised care for all patients. By promoting evidence-based medicine, it reduces the costs of unnecessary tests, scans and over treatment. It supports timely decisions that can give patients the treatment they need more quickly.

The MDT framework is essential throughout the cancer care pathway which includes screening, diagnosis, treatment, long term and end of life care. It will incorporate a clinical decision support tool to assist areas where specialists are not available. 

3. Data collection

The platform serves a crucial role in data collection for cancer cases which will feed into national cancer registries. Data collected includes patient parameters, cancer information, recommended treatment, outcomes and complications. While the initial system focuses on the management of breast cancer, it is planned to expand to other areas of oncology and in future to additional medical fields such as gynaecology. We aim to utilise the OMOP Common Data Model to standardize our data and facilitate international collaboration for future research endeavours. 

4. Time - early detection & treatment

theMDT.online gives medical professionals who have no support in their area easy access to specialist cancer teams and guidelines. This includes timely information and recommendations on proper diagnostics, referral to cancer centres and treatment options.

It will be an important mechanism for streamlining pathways for cancers detected by screening once national screening programmes are in place.

UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 is “to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Target 3.4 is to “reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment,” with indicator 3.4.1: the “mortality rate attributed to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or chronic respiratory disease.” In a low-resource setting, theMDT.online is providing solutions to achieve this goal, measurably and sustainably.

In 2020, there were 7.8 million women alive who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 5 years (WHO 2021). Our solution serves women diagnosed with breast cancer in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa where 40% of breast cancer cases occur between the ages of 30 and 45 years, approximately 10-15 years earlier than in the USA and Europe. 

In low & middle income countries such as Kenya, patients are currently underserved because:

• There are extremely low numbers of specialists per population.

• Semi-urban and rural physicians lack access to adequate referral infrastructure.

• Specialists have limited time to address increasing rates of new cancer cases with little time to attend meetings.

• There is a lack of standardised care for cancer patients, resulting in inappropriate treatment on many occasions.

• Single-physician-management is common, however, unilateral decision making increases the risk of an individual clinician providing inappropriate care. In fact, the main purpose for the introduction of multidisciplinary meetings in the 1990s in the UK was to increase implementation of evidence-based practice and to stop individuals from treating patients outside accepted standards.

Our solution addresses the problems of access to a multidisciplinary approach by providing a comprehensive, easy to use framework for medical professionals. We offer a tool through which health care providers can discuss and plan the patient care pathway according to guidelines. It has been designed by doctors to help medical teams provide better access to care to all cancer patients. We want to improve their health outcomes through the implementation and optimization of the multidisciplinary approach by their physicians. 

Our team includes the right people to design and deliver this solution.  

Dr. Mariusz Marek Ostrowski has been a qualified medical practitioner for 25 years and sub-specialised in treating breast cancer in Europe in 2009. He established a breast unit in Kenya two and half years ago. As one of very few breast cancer specialists in East Africa, Marek trains and mentors junior medical colleagues in response to the shortage of trained clinicians. 36 clinical colleagues are registered on theMDT.online platform and are collaborating to Pilot the solution. TheMDT.online grew out of our observation of the gaps that existed between the number of women Marek could serve in a relatively well resourced hospital in Nairobi and the clear unaddressed need in the wider region. Having worked in Multidisciplinary Teams in hospitals in Poland and the UK, and through discussions with Kenyan colleagues, we saw that an online platform for collaboration could begin to fill some of the gaps, leveraging our time, training other clinicians in best practices, generating critical data for better care and better outcomes systemwide, and ultimately reaching more patients.

Sweata Shah was born and grew up in Kenya, studied law in the UK. After working in financial services in Europe and Asia, she moved home to Kenya. Since then she has been looking at how best to fill the enormous gaps in cancer care between Africa and Europe. Sweata is the CEO of Hippomed Ltd and drives business development for the company. 

On the design and development of the solution, Tomasz Ostrowski leads software development. Tom was the founder and lead developer of ArsLege.pl, the largest online learning platform for lawyers in Poland. Tom has worked as a software architect for Siemens, is a certified IBM Artificial Intelligence Engineer, and he is a seasoned project manager.

Mark Shah-Ostrowski is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Oxford. He has previous experience with web development, game design and managing teams of remote developers. Having witnessed the profound inequalities in access to health care between the UK and sub-Saharan Africa, Mark has been working closely with the Oxford University Global Surgery Group and is developing a website for breast cancer awareness in East Africa in English and Swahili. 

To design with users and understand the needs of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Kenya, we began prototyping with users and Piloting in 2020. theMDT.online currently serves the community of 222 living patients and engages 36 Kenyan medical practitioners. Patients and medical professionals are the wider team guiding our development with feedback, ideas and needs to make this knowledge system, in the words of Dr. Mohamed Ali Abdalla Billel, a living, learning network. 

Investor-advisers:

Based in Nairobi, Kenya since 2012, Will Clurman (MBA ‘97) is co-founder and CEO of eKitabu, an award-winning social enterprise in accessible edtech with investment from UNICEF Innovation. Will has worked since 1993 on internet systems, software, and telecommunications. Prior to co-founding eKitabu, Will held leadership roles in product and business development for Netscape, Lycos, Openwave, and Cloudmark.

Matt Utterback began his career as a social entrepreneur in 2004 working in Cambodia, Laos and Kenya with Digital Divide Data and in 2012 co-founded eKitabu with Will Clurman. He served as the first Program Manager at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center in 1997, after which he joined NewcoGen Group, the predecessor to Flagship Pioneering.

We passionately believe that our solution plays a fundamental role in the delivery of quality cancer care in low resource settings. While it has been developed for the East Africa region, it is relevant globally. We hope that by applying to the Solve Challenge we can: 

1. Collaborate in a trusted support group with other Solvers with shared values focused on impact, particularly individuals and organizations working in breast cancer research and care in the MIT community and our region.

2. Build rigorous evidence of impact and cost-effectiveness through monitoring and evaluation support for our impact measurement practices, with the specific aim to design and implement a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) in collaboration with MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).   

3. Gain mentorship and access to MIT Solve’s network of partners, including researchers and firms working at scale on projects involving non-communicable diseases in low and middle income countries.

As we increase the number of patients served by our solution and the number of medical professionals it engages, we would like to expand into breast cancer screening programmes powered by new, lower cost screening and diagnostic technologies. With the chronic lack of radiologists both in East Africa and globally, the role of AI tools in reading screening mammograms will be essential.  

We are confident that, through MIT Solve, we will connect, collaborate and learn with partners doing leading edge work in AI for cancer screening that is better, faster and cheaper than traditional screening methods. Professor Regina Barzilay’s work in MIT CSAIL holds the potential to dramatically increase breast cancer screening capacity in Kenya. The complementary work by Professor Polina Golland and her team in biomedical image analysis, including Dr. Ruizhi Liao’s Multimodal Representation Learning via Maximization of Local Mutual Information, is very promising. TheMDT.online can help fill massive gaps in AI training data with original African datasets. Through collaboration in MIT Solve, in the words of Professor Regina Barzilay, we can “make late diagnosis a relic of the past.”

A multidisciplinary team approach to cancer care has been in existence for over 20 years in developed countries, with clinicians meeting physically in one place or virtually at one time.

However, this approach is not widely available to women with breast cancer throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Embodying the MDT framework in a knowledge system, making it accessible and scalable through theMDT.online cloud infrastructure on common mobile devices is widening access, accelerating learning, and multiplying capacity for quality breast cancer in real time today.

theMDT.online addresses the obstacles of adopting MDTs and giving patients access to them by:

• Giving medical professionals and trainees who have no support in their area easy access to specialist teams, imaging analysis, treatment guidelines and records 

• Allowing all medical professionals to contribute at any time from anywhere to their patient care discussions, saving time and resources

• Encouraging health care providers to either start their own MDTs or join others depending on their needs, thereby encouraging collaboration, sharing expertise and knowledge through the network

According to the Ministry of Health Kenya Cancer Policy 2019-2030, cancer registration and surveillance in Kenya has been suboptimal, with the country largely relying on GLOBOCAN estimates to inform policy and planning. TheMDT.online gathers vital data on cancer patients that can be fed into national cancer registries used for cancer control, epidemiological research, government policy, public health programmes and patient care improvement. Data from theMDT.online on 5-year outcomes will be invaluable for understanding the effectiveness of cancer care interventions in East Africa. 

OVERALL IMPACT GOAL: Increase women’s 5-year survival rates from breast cancer in Kenya to over 90%.

IMPACT GOALS for people’s lives served and saved by the solution

YEAR 1

• Establish the baseline for measurement of this goal through analysis of current data and closing critical data gaps 

• Establish baseline measurements for patients at the beginning of the cancer care pathway

• Increase awareness of and adherence to guidelines for screening within the medical network on the platform: 90% of medics to recommend screening

• Increase participation 150% from current number of 36 medical professionals to 54

• Increase involvement 200% from current 7 to 14

• Build on current breast MDT platform

YEAR 5

• 90% 5-year survival rate measured from the day of diagnosis with consistent 5-year follow up

• >90% of patients experience improved well-being measured throughout treatment

• Early detection & screening indicators:

      -  90% of users on the platform recommend screening for all patients

      -  Cooperation with 90% of county referral hospitals to utilize existing mammogram infrastructure

      -  Cooperation with 90% of private/non-profit health providers with available facilities

• Increase number of medical participants by 5x

• Increase trainees by 10x

• Introduce certification

• Build out additional MDTs for other cancers: cervical, prostate, lung, upper GI, liver

We believe we can scale to reach 25,000 patients with breast cancer in 5 years in Kenya alone.

World leaders pledged to reduce mortality from noncommunicable diseases (NCD) by one-third by 2030 as part of the United Nations’ Agenda for Sustainable Development. They recognized the importance of SDG 3 and ensuring that people do not just survive, but live long and healthy lives, as well as the importance of reducing NCD mortality.   Our primary goal is to achieve better health outcomes for cancer patients. We want to improve the 5-year survival rate for women with breast cancer. This goal can be achieved through a multisectoral approach that starts with quality care mediated and made accessible through technology, and at wider system level in collaboration with government stakeholders, the implementation of consistent treatment guidelines, national screening programs, increased public awareness, and improved diagnosis and treatment. Our solution helps with each of these key factors: 

1. The platform provides easy access to guidelines and good practices 

2. As a training tool, theMDT.online improves knowledge and practices among providers so they are better equipped to deliver quality care 

3. It provides treatment pathways for newly diagnosed patients which will be essential once national screening programmes are introduced 

4. It has direct impact on how a patient receives quality care with built-in monitoring of procedures & outcomes for learning, compliance, transparency and accountability    

Our key performance indicators of progress toward our impact goals are:

• The number of patients on the system

• The 5-year survival rate of women served by our solution

• Post-treatment quality of life, measured by surveys such as Breast Q

• The number of screening-detected cancers

• The number of medical professionals using the platform

• The number of provider institutions that subscribe to the platform

• The range and number of cancer MDTs that are available for patients

The United Nations’ Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 3, targets good health and well-being for all at all ages. In particular SDG 3.4 specifies the target to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment  by 30%.

Our key performance indicators align with this goal. We want to see better long term outcomes for cancer patients, and to this end our primary goal is to ensure that all cancer patients are discussed within a MDT framework.

INPUTS

• Strengthen the breast MDT platform currently in Pilot phase for breast cancer patients: 222 patients on the platform, engaging 36 medical professionals

• Other cancers  to be added

• Training of users

• Subscription sales & distribution of the platform to health care providers such as cancer care centres, hospitals, county level health systems 

• Sales to insurance companies

OUTPUTS

• Institutionalisation of the MDT methodology in the health care provider setting

• Medical professionals and their patients have access to MDT specialists

• Greater specialist buy-in through an easy to use, time-saving and convenient platform

• Collaboration between medical professionals to reach consensus on the most appropriate clinical pathway for the patient

• Training tool for junior doctors in diagnostic methods and treatment of cancer

• Data collection

INTERMEDIATE OUTCOMES

• Faster diagnosis & correct treatment plans for cancer patients, resulting in efficiency and cost savings to the payer

• Better trained medical professionals for the future

• Data collection on cancers, treatment, outcomes and complications

IMPACT

• High quality, accessible and affordable cancer care for everyone, everywhere

• Better long-term outcomes for cancer patients. For breast cancer patients, the 5-year survival rate will increase

• Improved post-treatment quality of life

• Accurate data collection will lead to reliable public health policy and programs for people with breast cancer

  
  

theMDT.online is a knowledge system, as defined by van Kerkhoff and Szlezák: “a network of actors… that dynamically combines knowing, doing, and learning to bring about specific actions for sustainable development.” The core technology of theMDT.online is not its software architecture (java, rest api, React.js, html), end-user devices (Android, Apple) or cloud infrastructure (Amazon Web Services) that we have used to implement the platform. The true core technology that powers theMDT.online—the living heart of the network—is the wisdom, knowhow and learning of multidisciplinary teams that is proven to increase women’s 5-year breast cancer survival rates and well-being.

TheMDT.online began life with the aim of providing better, more equitable health outcomes and continuity of care for breast cancer patients, which primarily affects women. As builders of a dynamic knowledge system to tackle complex challenges, we embrace diversity, equity, and inclusivity for sustainable development on three levels:

1. In our team: Our team is led by a female Kenyan CEO and, in addition to Kenyan nurses, doctors, and health care workers includes Polish and American citizens. As we grow the team, we are committed to and have put in place policies to include people of all genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, with and without disabilities. We know that a diverse team will help us grow and learn together with the many people and communities we aim to reach.

2. For the women whose care is facilitated by theMDT.online: Kenya is ethnically, geographically, and economically diverse. Our primary goal is to increase access to care to improve health outcomes for all women. Achieving this requires us to include, listen to, and learn from the women we serve as we design our solution and adapt our strategy. We hope that the stories we’ve shared in our MIT Solve application help communicate how we’ve done this so far. Using and collecting data—our own as well as integrating data from outside sources—helps keep us honest and track our progress in pursuit of ensuring health and well-being for ALL, initially in our home country of Kenya and beyond as we grow.

3. For medical professionals who use theMDT.online to collaborate and administer care: Multidisciplinary Teams, the “MDT” in theMDT.online, are effective because they bring together a diversity of medical perspectives to address patients’ needs. Therefore, we must pay attention to who is being included—and who may be excluded—from theMDT.online community. We are all too familiar with online platforms’ potential to exacerbate real-world barriers to access and communication, of which plenty already exist in hospitals worldwide. Our goals for gains in efficiency and training of new and upcoming medical professionals will only be met if the community of people using our solution is inclusive and diverse. The act of recruiting the 36 medical professionals to form multidisciplinary teams in the Pilot has reinforced this for us and given us an opportunity to engage people across disciplines, genders, and clinics in very different regions of Kenya. Ensuring that their voices are heard and respected in the MDT’s facilitated by theMDT.online is equally important. As Nurse Jonah says (see Question 6) “I know who to talk to in the MDT.” We know her voice is critical to quality care.

Our direct customers are health care providers. The value proposition we deliver to these customers is better patient outcomes at a lower cost. We deliver surplus value by increasing the efficiency and capacity of their medical professionals and cancer specialists, who are an extremely scarce resource. At the conclusion of the current Pilot we will sell subscriptions to health care providers for utilizing theMDT.online. 

Providers have the option to create their own MDT ecosystem and/or leverage resources beyond their own institution. Variations of the subscription model will be offered to insurance companies on a pay-per-report model where insurance pays for one patient’s care after approval. We will provide site licences to government or donors to allow remote clinics and county referral hospitals to join and utilize theMDT.online.

Our customers need theMDT.online because in Kenya, health care providers are paid through a mix of direct fee for services paid by individuals, and private and public health insurance. Health care providers operate in a highly competitive market, with providers in urban areas vying for patients, yet they are constrained by scarce staff resources. Providers in rural areas are often the only choice for patients, yet they are constrained by their ability to provide specialised cancer care. Following the example we detail in Question 2, only 1% of eligible women in Kenya in 2018-19 were screened for breast cancer using mammography due to a lack of qualified radiology personnel, despite the availability of mammography equipment in county referral hospitals. Joining theMDT.online will enable these county hospitals to offer mammography and refer patients to specialists, leveraging resources in theMDT.online network.

Our direct beneficiaries are women diagnosed with breast cancer as well as women who would benefit from being screened for breast cancer. Our value proposition for our beneficiaries is increased access to care, and higher quality of care, with improved outcomes theMDT.online measures and reports, including cost data to compute cost-effectiveness on the basis of 5-year outcomes. 

We are funding our work through a combination of approaches. 

The investment capital we have raised is being used to fund product development and the current Pilot. It will carry us through the launch of our commercial product and initial scaling in Kenya.

We will charge a subscription fee for providers to utilize theMDT.online. Subscription fees will cover operating expenses to deliver our solution to these customers. As noted above, providing theMDT.online to public, county hospitals will require government contracts or donor funding.

We will seek grant funding and additional investment to scale our work geographically, further develop the product to enhance our AI screening capabilities, and to address cancers beyond breast cancer.

Initial startup costs are being funded by our founding team, including a lot of sweat equity. And, we have just secured a $500,000 seed investment from an East Africa based impact fund founded by Will Clurman (MBA ‘97) and Matt Utterback. This funding will carry us through the launch of our commercial product and initial scaling in Kenya after our current Pilot.

We have validated that the providers in the Pilot are willing to pay for theMDT.online. They report real value, accelerated learning and increased productivity from theMDT.online. 

Benefits they especially value include:

• collaboration with medical professionals in the network, internally and externally

• centralised patient data, including imaging data, in one online portal

• enabling staff to work and communicate remotely, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic

• a dashboard to measure their performance and outcomes

The Pilot is a cross-institutional, network MDT model. We recruited the 222 patients and 36 medical professionals using theMDT.online in the Pilot from four independent health care providers that collaborate with a private cancer centre in Nairobi.