Kerala has opened up an opportunity for startups to work together with Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council (K-DISC) in developing a fully digitally integrated Kerala Bone Marrow Registry.
The registry is aimed at solving the challenges faced by leukaemia patients in finding suitable stem cells and significantly reducing the cost of bone marrow transplants. Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) has called for an Expression of Interest (EoI) to select the startup which will work in coordination with K-DISC in developing the registry.
As per the details available from Kerala Health Department, the selected startup will have to develop a web-based registry for automating and digitising the patient–donor matching process. The registry will be integrated with the proposed Kerala Cancer Registry. “The registry will be closely linked to the Advanced Blood Collection centers, where the donors register their names, and the Transplant centers, where the patients register and undergo transplantation. The registry does the donor matching for each patient based on a standardized, globally accepted World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) donor matching algorithm. The list of matched donors will be updated in the registry and can be accessed by the Transplant center,” said an official.
The project will digitally transform the multi-step processes from donor and patient registration, donor-patient matching, the transplant process, and post donation follow-ups. It will also integrate with the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) so that patients from Kerala can easily search for possible matching donors worldwide and vice versa.
The web-based registry will also use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to boost patient-donor matching, predict chances of transplant success, and post-transplant complications. It will also be able to handle HLA typing using Next Generation Sequencing.
As per the officials, 29 startups have so far evinced interest in developing the project, and the last date for submitting the EoI was November 13.
