Skolkovo’s UNIM lab offers cancer patients crucial second opinion

When, at the beginning of this year, the UNIM lab opened at Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow, it offered cancer patients around the country the chance to get expert opinions on their tumours.

The lab’s mission is to improve the accuracy of cancer diagnosis, and accordingly, its treatment. Currently, it is estimated that between 50 and 80% of patients are given inaccurate diagnoses, resulting in people undergoing unnecessary operations and chemotherapy, being given the wrong kind of treatment for the cancer they have, or being incorrectly told that they do not have cancer.

UNIM, a resident of Skolkovo’s biomed cluster, is trying to change these frightening statistics by ensuring that as many specialists as possible, including the world’s top specialists, to see a patient’s slides and that diagnosis is given based on a collegiate decision.

“Generally, diagnosis is basically devoid of any information technology: the doctor looks at the histological glass slides through the microscope, and that’s it,” says Olga Karpova, lab manager at UNIM.