Technologyat the forefront of improving patient outcomes: The future is here

Srikanth Suryanarayanan ,Head-Imaging,GE HealthCare in an interaction with Express Healthcare emphasises that early detection is crucial in treating various types of cancer.However,many hurdles,like low awareness about symptoms,risk factors,availability of screening or testing options,and minimal concern about developing cancer,add significantly to the disease burden

As per the Indian Council for Medical Research‘Burden of cancers in India’, seven cancers accounted for more than 40 per cent of the total disease burden: lung (10.6 per cent), breast (10.5 per cent), oesophagus (5.8 per cent), mouth (5.7 per cent), stomach (5.2 per cent), liver (4.6 per cent) and cervix uteri (4.3 per cent). Could you underline the gaps that make up these statistics?

There are two essential things to understand when we speak about any disease -prevention and cure. The gaps in addressing the disease burden start when prevention itself is a challenge. Early detection is crucial in treating various types of cancer. However, many hurdles, like low awareness about symptoms, risk factors, availability of screening or testing options, and minimal concern about developing cancer, add significantly to the disease burden.Early detection is also deterred by the stigma or fear of cancer diagnosis, lack of family support on health issues, or even misattributing symptoms to different conditions.

So much so that, as per the UICC global survey, only 43 per cent of respondents in India suggested that they were concerned about developing cancer in their lifetime, compared to a worldwide average of 58 per cent. As a result, critical preventive or diagnostic measures are not widely adopted across the population, as indicated by the low penetration of screening programmes for various types of cancer.

To address the threatening burden of cancer, we must look at the road ahead, which is planked with technology on one side and innovation on another.

Talking about the role of technology in revolutionising cancer care, what are the most significant developments in the world of healthcare that will steer the change? Technology is vital to catching the disease early and has a strong correlation to better outcomes for the patient.From advancing image quality to being able to detect with heightened sensitivity, technological advancements across imaging technologies like CT, PET, MRI and more can lead to more accurate and precise detection of lesions.

The second critical clinical need is precision medicine. It defines the ability to understand the disease subtype and deliver personalised care for each patient.High prevalence levels coupled with long treatment cycles times creates capacity and efficiency challenges to our healthcare system. So, a more precise, personalised, and targeted treatment is critical for efficient management of the disease lifecycle.

Imaging technologies such as Ultrasound, Mammography, CT, MRI, and PET CT are vital tools that help the clinical in screening, detecting, and managing the lifecycle of care of a patient.

PET CT imaging is a critical frontline tool in the detection of a variety of cancers. It combines anatomical and physiological information in locating potential cancerous cells across the body. Advancement in PET CT with higher sensitivity, resolution, and image quality is critical to detecting smaller lesions than possible today. Digital detector technologies combined with advanced reconstruction and AI techniques augment the hardware to deliver better performance to clinicians.

Wipro GE HealthCare has been a pioneer in PET CT Imaging, bringing the first PET CT scanner to India to the first company to set up R&D and manufacturing of PET CT scanners in India. With this strength, we are now introducing a revolutionary digital PET CT scanner named Omni Legend, which was launched at AIIMS New Delhi recently. Omni Legend leapfrogs existing scanners with thenextgeneration liquid-cooled Digital Detector, industryleading NEMA sensitivity, and a platform that will scale to a whole-body scanner to reduce scan time significantly. It brings revolutionary AI technology, such as Auto Positioning, that allows precise patient imaging.

Theranostics fuel precision medicine. We see it as a reemerging field of medicine, creating targeted agents that can be used for diagnostic and/or therapeutic indications.

How do you think theranostics can be potentially used to address the gaps in cancer care?

Theranostics is an emerging clinical science that combines diagnostics and therapy to deliver targeted treatment. Clinicians simultaneously identify biomarkers that can be used in diagnosis and therapy to target specific disease cells and tissues in an organ. The early success of theranostics has created a stronger focus on molecular imaging and the need for advances to provide personalised disease management and prediction of response.

For instance, our innovation, Omni Legend, is designed to address this advancing clinical field through high sensitivity, spatial resolution, and clinical accuracy critical for imaging the patient and diseasespecific biomarkers, measuring subtle changes during the treatment protocol. These advances can help improve more comprehensive patient selection, targeting, and response assessment.

In the last few years, we have seen collaborations between the government and various stakeholders in the healthcare industry taking on a new meaning. PPPs are increasingly becoming effective as we look at partnerships to create awareness about a disease and play a role in making healthcare accessible. What is the role of partnerships in addressing the many gaps in providing accessibility to cancer care?

To be able to target the rising cancer burden, there is a need for a heightened widespread focus on effective prevention, targeted screening, and largescale awareness. Holistic and comprehensive healthcare solutions for health systems and patients can be driven through multi-stakeholder partnerships with players in the ecosystem.

The priorities must be driven collectively by stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem— the government, hospitals, healthcare professionals, and medtech and pharma companies. The responsibilities include:

◆ Spearheading awareness and mass education efforts

◆ Skilling more healthcare workers at a primary level on cancer detection

◆ Broadening access to advanced diagnostic tools for cancer detection

Various initiatives, like the Health Minister’s Cancer Patient Fund (HMCPF) under Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi and the National Health Protection Scheme under Ayushman Bharat, help patients pay for cancer diagnosis and treatment. We need strategic collaborations that enable breakthrough systems with novel clinical capabilities to reach the last mile. We want partnerships that make room for technologies that cater to higher patient volumes, use less dose, and still give better image quality, which can primarily support clinical research. At Wipro GE HealthCare, we are already aiming for this with some of our latest launches in this space.

The post-pandemic era will be driven by diagnostic solutions that offer features like ultra-fast scanning, come with advanced designs and promise quick results. When you think of future technologies, what are the possibilities in tech that we should be expecting?

The future of diagnostics is evolving considerably, spearheaded by the growing possibilities of technology applications in imaging. What we can expect in terms of new options is practically limitless.

Cancer care technology and tools must reach millions of patients across the country. One such opportunity to expand cancer care is through new business models such as public-private partnerships (PPP). It is a collaborative approach where clinical expertise and technology, such as PET CT imaging, be offered as a service through a remote partner. At the same time, infrastructure and patient enrolment are managed through a local partner. It creates a mechanism to bridge the clinical knowledge and skill gap while preventing patients from travelling long distances to seek advanced cancer care.

With PET/CT adoption rising across clinical areas, including oncology and beyond, the need for advanced imaging solutions and technology-enabled detection has become more critical today. Over the next 10 to 20 years, we see two conditions in PET/CT. One is the flexibility to scan beyond FDG with new, emerging tracers that can enable different procedures, such as the diagnostics portion of theragnostic imaging. Two, in terms of the capability to accommodate increasing patient volumes.

AI is fast becoming a necessary clinical tool in managing any disease and will play a central role in cancer care and management. Cancer care involves collecting, analyzing, and inferencing from a large and complex amount of patient data. AI tools can efficiently process and analyse large, diverse data sets for clinical experts across the country to visualise them on digital platforms, collaborate, and efficiently provide better care for patients across the country.

We can expect more solutions that address patient and practitioner pain points, such as by making processes more automated and efficient and enhancing the user experience.