Hyderabad, October 23: A robotic arm to perform quick, cost-effective biopsies, to diagnose and treat lung, liver and other soft-tissue cancers.
A portable “lab in a box” for diagnostic testing of HIV, Malaria, Diabetes and Arthritis – cheaply and quickly, right to the patient.
Interestingly, these innovative, highly technical diagnostic kits are designed and developed by India-born American scientists, now working in Chennai and Bangalore respectively.
These cost effective but robust products are expected to revolutionise the health-care sector world over.
“You don’t really need to look to the West for innovation,” avers Bala Manian, an Indian-born American and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who set up ReaMetrix industry in Bangalore manufacturing the box type lab for critical blood tests in a jiffy.
“Fundamentally, although I am born and raised in India, I am an American,” Manian told WashingtonPost’s India-based correspondent Symon Denyer recently.
“I really see this as an opportunity to transform the paradigm in how health care is managed in the developed economies, particularly the United States,” he said.
“It is a very different market here,” explains Bangalore-bassed robotic arm maker Perfint’s chief executive Mr.S. Nandakumar. “It is not supported by
insurance companies. Here, everybody pays from their own pocket or the government’s pocket.” That, he said, makes it tough to survive in the Indian market.
“So we are leveraging Indian market requirements, saying if something succeeds here, it should succeed elsewhere.”
Manian, of ReaMetrix, began his career in the world of digital optics, work spanning supermarket bar codes to the defense industry, from medical scans to movie special effects, winning him an Oscar in 1999 for his contribution
to films such as “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Return of the Jedi.” At ReaMetrix, he saw an opportunity in the world of medical reagents – compounds that react with chemicals in blood, urine or sputum to help diagnose medical conditions.
Liquid reagents that often require refrigeration are not always suitable for the Indian market, so the company designed cheap, dried reagents that could be easily shipped across the country.
The next step was to design a multipurpose portable diagnostic machine, a neat box the size of a small PC’s hard drive, run on a car battery and situated in a doctor’s surgery clinic or a small-town medical clinic
anywhere in the country.
Using state-of-the-art optics, it can perform CD4 blood tests to detect and monitor HIV in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of its competitors.
Tests for diabetes and arthritis are being developed, along with others able to differentiate quickly among malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya, or between infectious and viral diseases.
The box “leverages” global technologies – hardware from Germany, electronics from California, software from India and the United States, optics designed in India and made in Germany. Test results, instead of being sent to a lab
and coming back days later, are available from 15 minutes to two hours later.
In Chennai, Perfint is setting its sights principally on emerging markets rather than the United States. With the World Health Organization reporting that cancer was set to become the world’s deadliest disease, and with 40
percent of the world’s smokers in India and China, the company set out looking for a cost-effective method of diagnosis and treatment.
Existing methods of biopsies involve surgery, exposure to high-powered X-rays, significant costs for disposable items or difficult-to-acquire surgical skills. Under Perfint’s system, a robotic arm is positioned above
the patient, with a CT scan and three-dimensional computer modeling system helping a doctor guide a needle to exactly where the biopsy needs to be taken.
The same procedure can help administer anesthetic to exactly the right spot and even burn a tumor with electromagnetic waves in a process known as ablation – a significantly more precise method than many other cancer
treatments available.
There are a number of factors that could handicap India’s development as a global health-care research hub, including a lack of venture capital, the absence of a supportive policy framework and a shortage of clinical partners willing to test and help develop products.
Attracting good talent is a problem, too. The hierarchical culture makes young people not as adventurous here as they are in Silicon Valley, Manian
said, while scientific accomplishment is valued less than material wealth in modern India.
“The Indian market really pushes you to the edge,” Nandakumar said. “The procedures you look at are very different, very cost-effective, but when we do this, we find it is actually what the Western world wants. (RNI)
