Partnering with ASCP for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa

During his talk titled “Laboratory Information Systems for Low Income Countries: LIS for the Other 2 Billion of US” at the recent ASCP 2018 Annual Meeting, Dr. Dan Milner described how XiFin’s cloud-based LIS will be used to facilitate access to clinical diagnostics and treatment collaboration for cancer patients in Africa.

Cancer is a growing epidemic and currently one of the leading causes of death in Sub-Saharan Africa with approximately 650,000 people developing cancer yearly – the actual number is probably much higher due to the lack of diagnostic testing and subsequent under-reporting of cancer cases. According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer is less than 50% in countries such as Gambia, Uganda, and Algeria, compared to nearly 90% in the United States. These numbers reflect a lack of access to adequate screening and laboratory services and a shortage trained African pathologists.

XiFin is part of ASCP’s “Partners for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment in Africa” which is a movement that is striving to improve access to critical diagnostic cancer testing through technology. XiFin is providing its cloud-based LIS to enhance the electronic collection and management of patient specimens and, along with other ASCP partners, enabling a virtual digital pathology workflow. ASCP has made significant investments in fiber optic connectivity to ensure access to the internet so that African pathologists can leverage these technologies to collaborate with pathologists in the United States for peer review and secondary consultation.

XiFin LIS has an architectural design that makes it very easy to scale in multiple labs and countries by configuring workflows and seamlessly cloning the environment for each new lab. System administration can be managed centrally and, beyond barcode and scanning peripherals, there is no onsite hardware to maintain. In the next few months, XiFin will be deploying its LIS to four labs in Rwanda before moving on to additional Sub-Saharan African countries.

Learn more about this cause and see how you can help here.

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