Page 49 - Insurance Times September 2019

modeling for over a decade, a company spokesperson said. port, 55% of the breast cancer cases in India were detected
“These are the two critical areas for healthcare. We do high at a late stage, compared to 11% in the UK. Similarly, for
level work with predictive modeling as a tech company and cervical cancer, 85% of the cases were detected at the third
partner with domain experts like labs to use our tech ex- or fourth stage, against 25% in the UK. A large number of
pertise in these areas,” she said, adding healthcare was an cancer deaths, especially in these cases, could have been
important vertical for the company. prevented if the disease had been detected on time.

India’s top IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services “Screening efforts are very poor and there is very low
(TCS), too, has set up a research centre in partnership with awareness, and this is a cultural challenge. Having low-cost,
Tata Medical Centre to develop technology for clinical tri- less-invasive screening solutions will democratise cancer
als, risk-adapted treatment, predictive outcomes and care,” said Kaivaan Movdawalla, Partner – Performance
biomarkers. TCS provides solutions to develop a data- Improvement Healthcare, EY India. So, tech companies are
driven research platform, based on integrated analyses of starting to see potential in cancer diagnosis and prediction,
clinical and laboratory studies. even as a clutch of homegrown startups has already come
up with innovative solutions in this space.
At its Translational Cancer Research Centre, the focus is on
developing partnerships that provide modern, affordable Starting it all Bengaluru-headquartered Niramai Health
cancer therapy and also develop cost effective models of Analytix is one such startup that has rapidly gained visibil-
care. This includes innovatively designed clinical studies, ity. Its portable technology uses big data analytics, AI and
biomarker analyses and basic research integrated into a ML to screen breast cancer cases early and accurately.
modular research theme, parts of which TCS will be in-
volved in. Technology behemoth Microsoft is also not too “A large number of breast cancer deaths can be prevented.
far behind, and has invested in the sector. Having a less invasive solution using artificial intelligence
and thermal imaging is something that’s well suited to di-
Last September, Microsoft partnered with SRL Diagnostics agnostic centres. Our solution is available in over 30 hos-
to source one million biopsy samples from patients diag- pitals in India,” said chief executive Geetha Manjunath. The
nosed by doctors earlier, in order to train its AI system to company is now developing AI-based computer-aided soft-
detect cancer. It is also working with Apollo Hospitals to ware to control the spread of River Blindness, a disease
build an AI system that can detect heart irregularities in caused by a parasitic worm infection.
patients, to give them a health score. Cancer focus In In-
dia, the high cost of treatment is one reason why compa- While Niramai has brought in an entirely new way of de-
nies are focusing their energies on latestage cancers. tecting cancer, the Pune-based Optrascan has developed
a digital pathology solution that can replace microscopes
The incidence-tomortality rate for cancer here is among in laboratories. Optrascan applies AI and ML algorithms to
the highest in the world. The focus is on cancer treatment, slides that pathologists work on, and has an accuracy level
given the enormity of the problem. According to an EY re- of over 95%.

On the other end of the spectrum, Bengaluru-based
OncoStem Diagnostics has developed a solution that makes
it easier for patients to test for recurrence of cancer. It
potentially reduces cases where chemotherapy may be
required, if the test on the tumour tissue shows it is a low-
risk patient and not prone to recurrence, according to the
company. While these companies may be working to cre-
ate solutions for a specific disease, most of their tools can
be extended to detect other diseases as well.

In January, Mumbai’s Wadhwani AI signed up as the offi-

The Insurance Times, September 2019 49