Julie Torode: Great to hear a Minister of Health giving attention to key drivers for change in patient outcomes

In conjunction with the World Cancer Day 2024, YB Health Minister got down to brass tacks to address a highly important concern around treatment commencement time for cancer patients in Malaysia – a commendable effort towards early initiation of treatment within 1 month.I am sharing herewith some humble thoughts we could collectively consider, regarding the above noble vision.

1. The term ‘time-to-treatment initiation (TTI)’ is generally used to assess the number of days from the point of diagnosis to the start of treatment. In oncology, as a rule of thumb, the date of treatment initiation is defined as the date on which the first surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy is performed.
Presently available literatures conclude a strong relationship between longer waiting time and poorer overall survival, hence the urgency to improve patients’ TTI.

2. As data is currently scarce around the waiting time(s) of cancer patients in Malaysia, it is time that we Ministry Of Health, Malaysia (KKM) could perhaps initiate data collation on TTI by types and stage of common cancers which includes lung, breast, colorectal, head and neck, and cervical cancers.

This could also possibly be a good topic for our MPH/DrPH candidates to explore as a baseline project?

I would also like to envision if our pharmaceutical colleagues and NGO’s would join hands as partners and collaborators to explore ‘TTI among cancer patients in Malaysia’ as a wider nationwide research project?

As TTI is generally expected to differ by cancer types (among other factors), this nationwide study would first give us the much-needed data as a starting point upon which.

Moving forward, KKM will be able to proceed to set an acceptable ‘X waiting days’ for TTI as a target indicator or KPI for common cancers in Malaysia.”

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Source: Julie Torode/LinkedIn and Sri Ganesh/LinkedIn