German academics tackle cervical cancer in africa with SAP HANA

diginomica.com (UK) | 20.11.2015

In the developed world, regular screening, early detection and rapid treatment have led to positive long-term outcomes for women diagnosed with cervical cancer. In the developing world, the disease is still a killer. In Western Europe or Australia/New Zealand, for example, for every 100,000 women diagnosed with the disease, fewer than two will die from it, according to figures from the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO). In East Africa, it is closer to 30 (27.6). There, few women will ever be screened. For many of those diagnosed, treatment comes too late. Dr. von Knebel-Doeberitz’s Emerging Technologies in Cervical Cancer Screening (ETiCCS) project is currently a one-year study involving 800 women, delivered by the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Much of the technology involved was provided for free by SAP and Intel. Roche, meanwhile, has provided the test kits. Dr. von Knebel-Doeberitz and his team worked with staff at the Design & Co-Innovation Center team at SAP’s AppHaus Heidelberg center, to design a mobile app that would work for the project, based on the company’s HANA Cloud Platform. This is designed to accelerate study recruitment and provision of cancer test results. SAP has produced a video showing the app at work. All patient data entered locally, along with test results, can be monitored remotely by staff at the Heidelberg University Hospital and, to ensure that the solution works in areas with patchy Internet connectivity, the local part of the tablet-based app can run in offline mode and be synchronized to the cloud via an Internet ‘dongle’ several times a day.
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